The nine tribal nations most directly involved in the Black Hills claim include the Oglala Sioux Tribe, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe, the Yankton Sioux Tribe, and the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, though the specific composition of the claimants has varied in different contexts.

Each of these nations has its own tribal government, its own membership, its own political leadership, and its own internal debates about the best path forward on the Black Hills question.

The consensus position — “the Black Hills are not for sale” — has been remarkably durable across these different governments and communities.

But the strategies for pursuing land return, the openness to different forms of negotiation, and the specific proposals that individual leaders have supported have varied.

This internal complexity matters because it shapes what has been possible politically.

Efforts to reach a legislative solution to the Black Hills question have repeatedly foundered partly on the difficulty of achieving unified agreement among multiple sovereign nations with differing priorities.