The continuing significance of this is not merely historical.

Treaty rights are, under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, part of the “supreme law of the land.” The treaties that Native nations signed with the United States are binding obligations of the federal government.

The Black Hills case, and its aftermath, illustrates both how those obligations can be violated and how the legal system responds to that violation — with acknowledgment and monetary compensation, but not with the specific performance that would actually fulfill the original promise.

The Sioux position that “the Black Hills are not for sale” is, in one reading, a statement about land and spirituality.

In another reading, it is a straightforward legal argument: the treaty said “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation,” it said no cession without three-fourths approval, and neither condition was honored.

The remedy that the law has provided — money — is not the remedy that the treaty’s language would imply.