The Billion-Dollar Check No One Will Cash

On June thirtieth, nineteen eighty, the United States Supreme Court ruled seven to one that the seizure of the Black Hills from the Lakota following the gold rush of eighteen seventy-four had been an unconstitutional taking. The court confirmed that the Fort Laramie Treaty of eighteen sixty-eight had guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota in perpetuity, that this guarantee had been violated, and that the United States owed compensation.

The court awarded approximately one hundred five million dollars.

The Lakota refused.

The eight nations of the Great Sioux Nation have refused that money for more than forty-six years. By twenty twenty-six, with accrued interest, the fund sitting in the federal treasury on behalf of the Lakota has grown to somewhere between one point nine and two point two billion dollars, unclaimed. It is the largest unclaimed tribal judgment in American history.

The Lakota position has never changed. The argument is not about the dollar amount. The argument is that land cannot be purchased after it has been stolen. Accepting the money would extinguish the legal claim to the land itself. The Black Hills, He Sapa in Lakota, are not for sale. That phrase appears on signs, on bumper stickers, on the walls of tribal offices across Pine Ridge, Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud.

A legal settlement sits in the treasury. A mountain range that was promised forever is carved with four presidents' faces. The Lakota want the land.