The context is everything.

The context is 1868 and the treaty language that promised “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the Black Hills.

It is 1874 and the military expedition that entered land the treaty protected, bringing miners and returning with reports of gold.

It is 1876 and the “sell or starve” provision that threatened starvation if the land was not surrendered.

It is 1877 and the Congress that converted a document signed by ten percent of the relevant population into law, stripping the Hills from the Great Sioux Reservation.

It is the century of legal struggle that followed — the Court of Claims, the Indian Claims Commission, the appeals, the reversals, the persistence — ending with a Supreme Court ruling that confirmed the wrong and offered money as the remedy.