South Dakota is celebrating its 125th anniversary as a state. We should recall what our Lakota people were asked to sacrifice at the time.

When the U.S. met the Sioux Nation at Fort Laramie in June 1866 to negotiate the Bozeman Trail to Montana, Col. Henry B. Carrington and 2,000 troops arrived to build forts. Chief Red Cloud said, “The white man comes to take the Indian’s land before he can say yes or no. I will fight.” Our Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho nations fought Red Cloud’s War to save the Black Hills and the Powder River Country. Red Cloud burned the forts before signing the 1868 Sioux Nation Treaty.

In the 1868 treaty, the United States “desire[d] peace” and pledged its honor that war would “forever cease.” The treaty guaranteed South Dakota west of the Missouri River for our “absolute and undisturbed use” as our “permanent home” and preserved Sioux reservations east river. Forty million acres were reserved as “unceded Indian territory” in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

In 1874, when George A. Custer discovered gold, miners rushed into the Black Hills, and in spring 1876, President Grant sent the Army to force our people out. Crazy Horse and our people defeated George Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17 and Custer’s 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. Grant sent out more armies, and our villages were savagely attacked in our treaty lands. Congress passed the “Sell or Starve” Act to take the Black Hills and 40 million acres of unceded Indian territory in violation of the Constitution. In 1877, the Army assassinated Crazy Horse.

In 1883, in Ex Parte Crow Dog, the Supreme Court held that our Sioux Nation treaties reserve to us “the best and highest form of government — self-government.” Throughout the 1880s, the United States sought more Lakota land, and our leaders opposed the loss of our homelands. As statehood approached, Dakota Territory leaders sought to “join up” southeast Dakota with the Black Hills — asking the Sioux Nation to cede 11 million acres in central South Dakota and dividing the Sioux Nation into six smaller reservations.