The Great Sioux Reservation as defined in 1868 encompassed resources — land, water, minerals — that would have provided the material basis for a different kind of economic development than what reservation conditions allowed.

This context is essential for understanding the internal politics of the Black Hills dispute.

When community members ask whether refusing the judgment fund is costing their people something they cannot afford to give up — whether, in concrete terms, the principled refusal is making harder lives harder — they are asking a real question.

The answer is not simple, and the tribal governments that have maintained the position of refusal have not done so against unanimous internal agreement.

The position has been maintained because the majority view, expressed through the political processes of sovereign tribal governments, has been that accepting the money would close the door on something more important than the money itself.

But that majority view has been formed in the knowledge of what the poverty on the reservations looks like, what the unemployment rates are, what the health outcomes have been for communities whose resource base was taken from them.