It is a live issue in federal Indian law and in the ongoing political conversation between the Sioux Nation and the federal government.

The broader question of what treaty obligations the United States owes to Indigenous nations — obligations it has frequently violated or simply ignored — is one of the most important unresolved questions in American law and politics.

Red Cloud’s War sits at the foundation of those obligations, at least as they apply to the Lakota people and the Powder River Country.

Understanding the war clearly — understanding that it was a real military and political conflict with real outcomes, that the outcomes produced real legal obligations, that those obligations have not been fully honored — is part of understanding what the relationship between the United States and Indigenous nations actually is and what it could be.

The story is not finished.