The Black Hills Were Not and Are Not for Sale

Who knows what will be happening by next year at this time, which will be the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Little Big Horn. So instead of waiting until then, I'm going to mark the 149th anniversary by sharing this article from Teen Vogue by Ruth Hopkins, Cankudutawin-Red Road Woman, a Dakota/Lakota writer and former tribal judge.

This history is also recounted in the books of Anton Treuer and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, but it's good to have it online in a single place, and I'm sure Hopkins has some details that are new to me.

A key part of the context is that this battle, and others, occurred because the U.S. violated a specific treaty, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which had promised the Oceti Sakowin the Black Hills in perpetuity in exchange for peace. But then, as usual, U.S. interests discovered something of capitalist value in the Black Hills — gold — and Might Makes Right became the order of the day.

U.S. troops invaded the area and the Battle of the Little Big Horn is just one of many Hopkins describes. The Oceti Sakowin never ceded the Black Hills, despite eventual military defeat, and in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that U.S. seizure of the land violated the Fort Laramie Treaty, which it obviously did. 

However, the court's answer was to "order just compensation," rather than return the land. "The Black Hills are not for sale," Hopkins writes. And they remain not for sale.

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Some related links:

Remember when Kristi Noem, then governor of South Dakota, did a big July 4 fireworks display at the defaced Mount Rushmore in 2020? Here's an article by Oglala Lakota journalist Tim Giago about that.

There are 1.3 million acres of U.S. Park Service lands in the Black Hills, which the U.S. could return to Native ownership if it wanted to. (Described in this 2021 High Country News article.)

An action petition from the Lakota People's Law Project.

Shepard Fairey did a print in 2012... now sold out: