All of white America needs to know this.
— Molly
 |
| American Indian Movement protest, 1975 |
The Land Was Never For Sale
The
Sioux have never accepted the validity of the US confiscation of Paha
Sapa, the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore is controversial among Native
Americans because it is located in the Black Hills. Members of the
American Indian Movement led occupations of the monument beginning in
1971. Return of the Black Hills was the major Sioux demand in the
1973 occupation of Wounded Knee.
Due
to a decade of intense protests and occupations by Lakotas and
allies, on July 23, 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of
Indians, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills had been
taken illegally and that remuneration equal to the initial offering
price plus interest—nearly $106 million—be paid. The Sioux
refused the award and continued to demand return of the Black Hills.
The money remained in an interest-bearing account, which by 2010,
amounted to more than $757 million.
The
Sioux believe that accepting the money would validate the US theft of
their most sacred land. The Sioux Nation’s determination to
repatriate the Black Hills attracted renewed media attention in 2011.
A segment of the PBS NewsHour titled “For Great Sioux Nation, Black
Hills Can’t Be Bought for $1.3 Billion” aired on August 24. The
reporter described a Sioux reservation as one of the most difficult
places in which to live in the United States: "Few people in the
Western Hemisphere have shorter life expectancies. Males, on average,
live to just 48 years old, females to. Almost half of all people
above the age of 40 have diabetes. And the economic realities are
even worse. Unemployment rates are consistently above 80 percent. In
Shannon County, inside the Pine Ridge Reservation, half the children
live in poverty, and the average income is $8,000 a year.
But
there are funds available, a federal pot now worth more than a
billion dollars. That sits here in the U.S. Treasury Department
waiting to be collected by nine Sioux tribes. The money stems from a
1980 Supreme Court ruling that set aside $105 million to compensate
the Sioux for the taking of the Black Hills in 1877, an isolated
mountain range rich in minerals that stretched from South Dakota to
Wyoming.
The
only problem: The Sioux never wanted the money because the land was
never for sale."
That
one of the most impoverished communities in the Americas would refuse
a billion dollars demonstrates the relevance and significance of the
land to the Lakota nation, not as an economic resource but as a
relationship between people and place, a profound feature of the
resilience of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
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