Almost three decades have passed since the Supreme Court upheld the Indian Claims Commission’s award of $102 million to the Lakotas. Since then, the award has continued to gain interest. By 2007, the figure was close to $750 million.
Over the years, some Lakotas and other Sioux have argued that the tribes should take the money. Some have suggested that funds be distributed directly to families and individuals; others that they be invested in social programs; still others that they be used to purchase lands in the Black Hills and elsewhere. The large majority of Lakotas, however, continue to believe that accepting the money would be the same as endorsing the legitimacy of the government’s original taking of the Hills. “The Black Hills are not for sale” remains a fundamental tenet of Lakota nationalism.
(Jeffrey Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, The Penguin Library of American Indian History, ed. Colin G. Calloway [New York: Viking, 2010], 188 [endnote omitted])
Note from KBJ: This is a good example of acting on principle.
