The Black Hills award approaching 1 billion dollars
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Anyone who watched HBO’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee had to be pretty quick to catch the scroll at the end of the movie about the illegal taking of the Black Hills from the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation. Justice Harry Blackmun in his legal opinion wrote, “A more ripe and rank case of dishonest dealings may never be found in our history.”
The U. S. Supreme Court decreed that the Hills did belong to the Sioux and on July 23, 1980 awarded them $105,994,430.52 for the Black Hills (Docket 74B) and $40,245,807.02 for lands taken east of the Black Hills (Docket 74A).
The scroll at the end of the movie indicated that the award now stood at $600 million and the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota refused to accept it. Well, that figure was wrong and should have been updated. As of today the amount of the awards are $757,465,288.74 for the Black Hills and $105,821,479.16 for the land taken east of the Black Hills.
That brings the total owed to the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation to $863,286,767.90. A nice chunk of cash.
And yet, the poorest of people in all of America refuse to accept one single penny of the award.


Tim Giago is an Oglala Lakota. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in the Class of 1991. His book “Children Left Behind, the Dark Legacy of the Indian Missions” is available at: order@clearlightbooks.com. The book won the Bronze Star from the Independent Publishers Awards. He can be reached at najournalist1@gmail.com
Note: Content © Tim Giago
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