Paha Sapa
Background
Paha Sapa/ Kȟe Sapa (The Black Hills,) is land the Oceti Sakowin have been stewards over since time immemorial- it has been said to be the birthplace of the Nation. Its people hold this land to be sacred- paramount to their ceremonies, traditions, identity, and way of life.
According to the Fort Laramie treaty the Black Hills belong to Oceti Sakowin; as treaties are said to be the “supreme law of the land” there is no legal justification to withhold this land from the sovereign nation .The reality of ownership is in plain black and white, but this did not stop the genocidal project of the American Nation State from stealing and desecrating the sacred Oceti Sakowins’ land, specifically the Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe or Six Grandfather mountain, today known to many as Mt. Rushmore.
As is the story for a large portion of genocidal imperial nation building, resources were found to be held in great reserves in the Black Hills, specifically gold. This monetary value placed on the hills justified displacement and continued genocidal tactics of settlement and conquest.
After gold was discovered in 1874 migrations by Settler Colonialists embarked upon Paha Sapa in a feverish attempt to get rich by accumulating resources through destruction and exploitation of Indigenous land.
Settler colonialists pressured the United States military to steal the Black Hills from the Oceti Sakowin- ignoring the Fort Laramie treaty entirely. In 1876 the Indian Appropriations Act was passed, withholding rations from the Oceti Sakowin forcing them to enter negotiations with the corrupt entity known as the United States.
The Black Hills were subsequently stolen from the Oceti Sakowin, but 100 years later in the 1980 supreme court case: United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the court ruled that the Black Hills had been illegally taken from the Oceti Sakowin. The supreme court ruled the Nation were owed over one hundred million dollars. However, the nation would not accept this payment, the money has sat collecting interest since and is valued to be worth over one billion dollars.