The United States government and its representatives had spent the decades since the first major treaty negotiations with the Lakota demonstrating a consistent pattern: promises made to the Lakota were kept when convenient and violated when inconvenient, and the resources and cultural symbols of the Lakota were subject to appropriation, commercialization, or destruction according to the interests of American expansion.

The Black Hills — Pahá Sápa, the sacred heart of the Lakota world — had been guaranteed by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and then opened to gold seekers when gold was found, with the Army turning a blind eye and ultimately being deployed to force the Lakota off the land rather than protect their treaty rights.

The sacred objects, ceremonial practices, and cultural treasures of many Plains peoples were being collected by museums, individual collectors, and anthropologists who did not ask permission and did not observe any protocol of Indigenous consent.

Graves had been disturbed.