It will require acknowledging not just that a wrong was done, which the Supreme Court has already acknowledged, but that the remedy for that wrong must be something more than a check.

The billion dollars is the proof of what was acknowledged.

What comes next is the question that has not yet been answered.

The Longer History — How The Claim Was Almost Extinguished Before It Began

To understand how the Black Hills claim survived long enough to reach the Supreme Court in 1980, you have to understand how completely the legal system had, at various points, been closed to it.

The United States government, for most of its history, operated under the legal doctrine of sovereign immunity — the principle that the government cannot be sued without its consent.