What Belongs To The Telling — And What This Story Actually Reveals

The Black Hills dispute reveals something specific about the relationship between American law and American history when that history involves the taking of Indigenous land.

The legal system, at its best — and the 1980 Supreme Court ruling is arguably the legal system at or near its best in this context — can acknowledge historical wrongs, establish accountability, and provide remedies within the framework of available law.

The Court did all three of those things.

Its language was clear, its historical analysis was careful, its legal conclusions were sound.

What the legal system cannot do, operating within its own framework, is provide the specific remedy that the specific wrong requires.