The legal and political dimensions of the Black Hills dispute are clear enough to trace through the documentary record.

Less easily conveyed, but essential to understanding why the dispute has taken the form it has, is the specific significance of Paha Sapa to Lakota people.

This is territory where considerable care is required.

The spiritual and ceremonial life of the Lakota people involves specific knowledge, specific practices, and specific understandings that are not appropriate to describe in detail in a general publication — and that the Lakota people themselves have not invited the general public to examine.

What can be said, based on what Lakota leaders and scholars have themselves said in public contexts, is something about the structure of that significance rather than its specific content.

The Black Hills are understood to occupy a specific place in the Lakota relationship with the world.