The gap between the promise and the delivery is not ancient history.

It is a live issue with consequences that extend to the present.

Black Kettle deserves to be remembered.

His people deserve to have their treaty rights honored.

The flags he raised at Sand Creek were not symbols of submission.

They were signals in a diplomatic framework that the American government had created and then violated.

The framework is still there, in the treaties that were signed, in the legal obligations that the Supreme Court has confirmed, in the ongoing relationship between the United States and the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people.

Black Kettle raised the flags.