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

But it did not resolve the question that the Sioux were actually asking: not “how much are we owed?” but “when do we get the land back?”

That question remained, and remains, unanswered.

The Second Opening — How A Legal Victory Became Something Else Entirely

By the early 1980s, a strange situation existed.

The highest court in the United States had ruled that the Black Hills had been illegally taken from the Sioux people.

The Court had called it, in Justice Blackmun’s words, one of the most dishonorable episodes in American history.