He Sapa (Black Hills) Sacred Land Context

The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteed the Black Hills — He Sapa, in Lakota, the center of Lakota culture — to the Sioux Nation, exempting the land from non-indigenous settlement. Gold changed the calculus. After the Great Sioux War of 1876, the U.S. government seized the Hills anyway, forcibly relocating the Lakota. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled the seizure unconstitutional and awarded $106 million in compensation. The Sioux Nation refused the money. They want the land. The fund now sits at over $1.3 billion, uncollected.