The U.S. Government Offered The Sioux More Than $1 Billion For The Black Hills – They Refused To Take The Money

The tribal position was that this was unacceptable.

The Sioux had not sold the Black Hills in 1877.

They had had the land taken from them.

Accepting money now would be, in the understanding of those who refused it, the actual sale that 1877 had pretended to accomplish.

“The Black Hills are not for sale.”

That phrase became the expression of the collective position, the statement heard from leaders across multiple Sioux tribal nations, from AIM activists and traditional elders and elected tribal government officials, through the 1980s and 1990s and into the twenty-first century.