The money was not accepted because the money is not the remedy.

This tells us something about the limits of legal remedies when legal wrongs involve things that cannot be monetized.

Land that is sacred is not convertible into its monetary equivalent without a fundamental transformation of its nature.

A remedy that requires that transformation is not, in the understanding of those who hold the sacred relationship, a remedy at all.

The story also reveals something about the persistence of principle under pressure.

The economic conditions on Sioux reservations — the poverty, the unemployment, the inadequate healthcare and educational infrastructure — have been real and severe throughout the decades during which the judgment fund has sat uncollected.