Seizure of the Black Hills

The Black Hills, South Dakota, United States image from space.

The United States government illegally seized the Black Hills – a mountain range in the US states of South Dakota and Wyoming – from the Sioux Nation in 1876.[1][2] The land was pledged to the Sioux Nation in the Treaty of Fort Laramie, but a few years later the United States illegally seized the land and nullified the treaty with the Indian Appropriations Bill of 1876, without the tribe's consent.[3] That bill "denied the Sioux all further appropriation and treaty-guaranteed annuities" until they gave up the Black Hills.[4] A Supreme Court case was ruled in favor of the Sioux in 1980. As of 2011, the court's award was worth over $1 billion, but the Sioux have outstanding issues with the ruling and have not collected the funds.[5]

The Sioux tribes eventually managed to purchase a portion, 1,900 acres (3.0 sq mi) out of the total 6,000 square miles of disputed land in western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, in November 2012 which included the sacred Pe' Sla site.[6][7] The Pe Sla' site's federal Indian trust status, which was granted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2016,[7] was acknowledged by Pennington County in 2017.[8] In 2016 and 2018, some Cheyenne and Sioux tribes managed to purchase land near the sacred Bear Butte, which serves as a state park.[9][10]

  1. ^ Shaffer, Monica (2023). "Constitutionality of Reparations for Native Americans: Confronting the Boarding Schools". Mitchell Hamline Law Review. Stolen land here includes the land involved in coercive treaties and agreements, such as the one that removed the Black Hills from the Sioux Nation.
  2. ^ Estes, Nick (January 1, 2021). "The battle for the Black Hills". High Country News. Retrieved June 25, 2023. 'A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.' That is how a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court opinion described the theft of the Black Hills from the 'Sioux Nation of Indians.'
  3. ^ Barbash, Fred; Elkind, Peter (July 1, 1980). "Sioux Win $105 Million". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 22, 2021.
  4. ^ Wilkins, David E. (2010). American Indian Sovereignty and the US Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice. University of Texas Press.
  5. ^ "Why the Sioux Are Refusing $1.3 Billion". PBS NewsHour. August 24, 2011.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference landsarced was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference sacredpurchase was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Huntington, Stewart (March 24, 2017). "Tribes win federal trust status for Pe Sla property in Black Hills". KOTA TV. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  9. ^ Griffith, Tom (November 1, 2016). "Tribes buy Bear Butte land for $1.1M". Rapid City Journal. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
  10. ^ Holland, Jim (November 22, 2018). "1,020 acres near Bear Butte sells to tribes for $2.3 million". Rapid City Journal. Retrieved March 3, 2021.