There is an irony that runs through the entire Black Hills story, and it is worth naming directly.

The very legal system that the United States government used to take the Black Hills — the treaty process, the congressional power to legislate, the court system — is the system that the Sioux nations used for a century to pursue the return of what was taken.

And the most successful moment in that legal pursuit — the 1980 Supreme Court ruling — produced a remedy that the legal system was equipped to provide but that the Sioux were not able to accept.

The system confirmed the wrong.

The system offered money.

The money was refused.