After Indian Country
After the pomp and ceremony of Coolidge’s August visit, the president left a mixed legacy for the Lakota at Pine Ridge. For the rest of his tenure in office, he did little to meet the promises he had made before the large crowd assembled on the reservation. Early in 1928, his last full year in office, the president vetoed two bills that would have allowed Native tribes to sue in the US Court of Claims. This decision especially stung the people of Pine Ridge, who had lobbied the president to return the Black Hills, which had been taken by the government in the 1870s. “We do not want any money that is not ours,” wrote the signers of a memorial given to the president by the Sioux National Council, “but we do want what is honestly due to us.”
More than sixty years would pass before the tribes would gain an official recognition that their land had been taken illegally. In 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had violated the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution by breaking the terms of an 1868 treaty preserving the Black Hills for the Great Sioux Nation. This coalition of tribes was awarded $17.5 million plus interest accrued since the late nineteenth century. But the tribes have never accepted this payment, insisting the “the Black Hills are not for sale.” Today, the value of the court’s award has grown to over $1.4 billion.