The central drama is something else: it is about what the legal system can and cannot provide, about the difference between a judgment that acknowledges a wrong and a remedy that actually addresses it, and about what it means to hold a claim based on the nature of land rather than its monetary value.

The legal system operates within its own logic.

The Fifth Amendment provides for monetary compensation for takings.

The Supreme Court applied that logic and awarded that compensation.

The award was mathematically appropriate to the framework the Court was working within.

The Sioux nations are operating within a different logic — one in which the Black Hills are not the kind of thing that can be purchased, and in which accepting money as the price of a permanent settlement would not be resolving the claim but abandoning it.