What justice would demand, by the logic of the Supreme Court’s own ruling and by the Sioux nations’ understanding of what was taken, is some form of land restoration — the return of some portion of the federally held land in the Black Hills region to Sioux sovereignty.

The Bradley Bill was a partial implementation of this idea, focused on federal land only, excluding private holdings, and covering a fraction of what was originally taken.

Even that partial proposal was not politically achievable.

What the political system has provided is a monetary judgment, appropriated into a trust account, available for collection if and when the tribal nations choose to accept it as settlement of the land claim.

The gap between those two things is the permanent feature of the dispute as it currently stands.

What it would take to close that gap is not mysterious.