Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

12-18-90 . . . This evening there was a television program, The Spirit of Crazy Horse, about the Sioux Indians. I didn’t know it until I watched, but the Sioux refused to accept several million dollars in compensation for the theft of the Black Hills by the United States government in the 1870s. The United States Supreme Court upheld the ruling a few years ago. That’s nice; it shows that the Sioux have principles. As someone said during the program, you don’t sell your mother, so how can the Sioux sell the Black Hills? They want the hills back. The program was a combination of history (including descriptions of [George Armstrong] Custer’s 1874 expedition, the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890), politics, and reminiscence. You can’t help but feel sorry for today’s Indian children, who face a dilemma. Either they remain on the reservation, which virtually assures a life of poverty and idleness, or they move away, which virtually assures relinquishment of their proud history and culture. The Indian way of life is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The remaining people go through the motions but will never recover the intimacy with nature, the spirituality, and the fierceness of purpose that so characterized them as a people. It’s a sad story.