From the Argus-Leader:

A campaign conversation with the man who would become president of the United States has some Sioux leaders thinking they might finally get part of their sacred Black Hills back. And they’re working on a plan to achieve that.

In a May 2008 campaign stop in Sioux Falls, candidate Barack Obama told a gathering of tribal leaders he was open to discussing the Black Hills with them.

In fact, those tribal leaders say, the Obama campaign gave them a proposal that read in part: “Barack Obama is a strong believer in tribal sovereignty. He does not believe courts or the federal government should force Sioux tribes to take settlement money for the Black Hills. … Obama would not be opposed to bringing together all the different parties through government-to-government negotiations to explore innovative solutions to this long-standing issue.”

The promise of such negotiations has Sioux leaders revisiting ideas last considered in the mid-1980s, when New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, like Obama a Democrat, proposed that the U.S. government return 1.3 million acres of federal forests and unoccupied park lands in the Black Hills.

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