The Black Hills were taken in 1877.

The taking was accomplished by threatening starvation, by circumventing the treaty’s three-fourths requirement, by presenting a document whose terms the affected parties did not fully understand, and by Congress enacting the result into law before anyone could challenge it effectively.

The Supreme Court of the United States found, in 1980, that the taking was one of the most dishonorable episodes in American history and that just compensation was owed.

The compensation, with more than a century of interest, exceeded $1 billion by around 2011 and has continued to grow since.

The nine Sioux tribal nations have not collected the money.

They have not collected it because collecting it would legally extinguish the land claim — would convert what they understand as an illegal seizure into a completed sale.