Black Hills

Kirsten Carlson on “Priceless Property” (Black Hills)

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Kirsten Matoy Carlson has posted “Priceless Property,” forthcoming from the Georgia State University Law Review, on SSRN. Highly recommended!

Here is the abstract:

In 2011, the poorest Indians in the United States refused to accept over $1 billion dollars from the United States government. They reiterated their long held belief that money – even $1.3 billion dollars – could not compensate them for the taking of their beloved Black Hills. A closer look at the formation of the Sioux claim to the Black Hills helps us to understand why the Sioux Nation has repeatedly rejected over $1 billion dollars in compensation for land taken by the United States over 100 years ago. This article seeks to understand why the Sioux view the Black Hills as priceless by studying the formation of the Black Hills claim. It constructs a new, richer approach to understanding dispute formation by combining narrative analysis with the sociolegal framework for explaining dispute formation. The article argues that narratives enrich the naming, claiming, and blaming stages of dispute creation and illustrates the usefulness of this new approach through a case study of the Black Hills claim. It uses the autobiographical work of an ordinary Sioux woman to provide a narrative lens to the creation of the Sioux claim to the Black Hills. American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa presents a narrative of Sioux life around the time of the claims emergence. By contextualizing and humanizing the claim, my analysis provides insights into why the Sioux claim to the Black Hills emerged into a legal dispute and helps to explain why the Black Hills remain priceless property to the Sioux Nation today.

PBS Newshour Video on Black Hills Judgment

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here.

Atlantic Monthly Article: Why the Sioux Nation Says No to $1 Billion

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here is the article.

An excerpt:

MARIO GONZALEZ IS Oglala Sioux and Mexican and walks like he was once a linebacker. A tribal lawyer for the Sioux, Gonzalez has devoted much of his career to the convoluted fight for the Black Hills of South Dakota—a fight that has already lasted a century. More than 30 years ago, the federal Indian Claims Commission awarded the Sioux what amounted to $102 million for the taking of the Black Hills. But the Sioux didn’t want the money; they wanted their land back. So the money has lingered in trust accounts, accumulating interest. Today, in the name of some of the poorest people in the country, about $1 billion waits untouched in accounts at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

In his office in Rapid City, Gonzalez told me that he’s hopeful these days; during his campaign, Barack Obama indicated that he would be open to innovative solutions to the Black Hills case. Gonzalez is working with a group of Sioux to put a proposal in front of the president. I’d like to believe something could shift: in my time working in Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, from 2005 to 2007, no issue seemed more agonizing.

The struggle of the Sioux on the 17 reservations scattered from Montana through the Dakotas to Minnesota is written in abysmal statistics. More than 80 percent of residents of the Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge reservation are unemployed. Rape is pandemic. According to Oglala President John Yellow Bird Steele, almost half of Oglala Sioux over 40 have diabetes, and in the Western Hemisphere, few countries have shorter life expectancies (for men it is 48; for women, 52).

Tribe members insist that the 1877 act of Congress that moved the Sioux from their sacred Black Hills is not valid: it wasn’t agreed to by enough tribe members, and the land was never for sale in the first place. When the Supreme Court in 1980 affirmed the original award of $102 million, Gonzalez told me, “there was some jubilation among some of the tribal members. But there were a lot of younger people, including me, who felt that the Indian Claims Commission process, as it applied to the Sioux land claims, was a sham, and we should not participate.”

After all, if the land was never for sale, how can you ever accept money for it? Yet the federal courts consider the ownership question to be settled. The ICC had no authority to return land to the Sioux—just to give them restitution in the form of money. “The courthouse doors have been slammed in our face,” Gonzalez says. “Congress and the president are the only viable branches of government that can really resolve these issues.”

Some Sioux want to take the money now, Gonzalez says. “We tell them, ‘Our grandfathers and great-grandparents spilled a lot of blood so future generations could have a homeland that included the Black Hills.’” If the tribes accept the settlement, he adds, “and the money is all gone three years from now, that’s when the Sioux will become a defeated people. That’s when you will see them walking around in shame with their heads hanging.”

 

Black Hills Case Reopened

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From the NYTs:

A band of Sioux whose ancestors were driven from the majestic Black Hills more than 130 years ago is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, upsetting other tribal members who say taking money for the sacred land would be legitimizing the theft.

A lawsuit filed last week asks a federal judge to release as much as $900 million in compensation and interest that eight Sioux tribes refused decades ago. The tribes insisted instead on return of the rugged land in southwestern South Dakota they lost in military battles that included Custer’s Last Stand.

The dispute has split the tribes. Some 5,000 tribal members have signed up for the class-action lawsuit, but just 19 plaintiffs are listed because many others live on reservations and fear retribution, said lawyer Wanda L. Howey-Fox of Yankton.

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“Why Tribes Should Not Withdraw From Treaties”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher3 Comments

From RezNet’s TriBaLOG:

Following is a statement from the office of Rodney M. Bordeaux, president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe:

On December 19th, 2007 four individuals calling themselves the Lakota Freedom Delegation held a press conference at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Washington DC where they announced a plan to withdraw from all Treaties signed by Indian Tribes with the United States.

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MSU American Indian Law & Lit Speaker Profile: Kirsten Matoy Carlson

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

In the coming weeks, we will be profiling the work of the speakers scheduled to present at the 4th Annual Indigenous Law Conference, “American Indian Law and Literature.”

The first profiled speaker, Kirsten Matoy Carlson, will be presenting a paper called, “Unresolved Disputes:Narratives in the Transformation and Processing of Persistent Claims.”

Kirsten’s abstract (from SSRN):

In 1980, the Supreme Court decided the largest land claim ever lodged against the United States government in favor of the Lakota people. The decision should have ended Lakota claims to the Black Hills, but it did not. This law review article seeks to understand why these claims persist despite their formal adjudication. It brings two traditions of legal scholarship together for the first time by considering the role of narrative in the sociolegal processes of dispute creation and re-creation. It argues that grievances persist through narratives, which facilitate the naming, blaming, and claiming stages of dispute creation. These narratives present a separate historical and legal perspective, and argue for the righting of historical injustices. As these narratives are repeated, the dispute is created and re-created intergenerationally, often evolving along the way. The article concludes that these narratives, which diverge from traditional legal narratives about the claims, explain the persistence of the unresolved dispute.