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

And it accumulated interest.

By the late 1990s, the principal and interest together had exceeded $600 million.

By around 2011, reports from federal agencies and journalistic accounts placed the figure above $1 billion.

The PBS NewsHour, in a 2011 report on the fund, described it as “a federal pot now worth more than a billion dollars” containing nine Sioux tribes’ uncollected judgment.

A more recent 2024 PBS NewsHour description similarly confirmed the fund had grown past $1 billion.

The fund’s existence and continued growth is itself a kind of legal and moral accounting — a ledger showing, year by year, what the United States has acknowledged it owes and has not yet resolved.