Both logics are internally coherent.

The collision between them is what has produced four decades of a billion-dollar fund sitting uncollected in the Treasury.

There are also practical dimensions that the simple framing omits.

The judgment fund, if distributed to the nine tribal nations and their members, would be divided among a large population.

The per-capita benefit, while not trivial, would be consumed relatively quickly and would not produce the lasting economic foundation that sustained access to the land and its resources could provide.

The Hills themselves — the forests, the minerals, the water, the specific qualities of that particular landscape — would remain inaccessible.