A tribe that believed the United States had violated a treaty could not simply file suit and expect to be heard.

It needed congressional legislation authorizing the specific claim, access to a court with jurisdiction, and the ability to navigate procedural obstacles that the government could deploy at every stage.

Congress had, over the years, created limited mechanisms for addressing Indian claims — special jurisdictional acts, the Court of Claims, and eventually the Indian Claims Commission.

But each of these mechanisms came with limitations that favored the government’s position.

The Court of Claims had, in 1942, dismissed the Black Hills claim on grounds that effectively prevented it from reaching the merits — a ruling that was not about whether the taking was wrong but about whether the legal mechanism being used to challenge it was available.

The 1946 Indian Claims Commission Act represented Congress’s acknowledgment that the backlog of unresolved Indian claims was a problem that needed addressing.