He Sapa Restoration Act could be introduced next year

In the years after a second historic Wounded Knee incident attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez argued that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations. In 1987 New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley introduced the Sioux Nation Black Hills Act that would have returned 1.3 million acres to tribes signatory to the treaty but it died amid squabbling among the interested parties. 

In 2018 prisoner of war Leonard Peltier applied for executive clemency then again in 2020 for a compassionate release because of the coronavirus outbreak but both were denied because Donald Trump detests American Indians. 

In 2022 members of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate held a two-day conference to educate the next generation of Lakota leaders about the history of the Black Hills Claim.

Ahead of the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit and as part of the Cobell settlement the Interior Department's Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, some three million acres in fifteen states were returned to tribal trust ownership. Earlier this year the Interior Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the use of $31 million so the Klamath Tribes could acquire nearly 90,000 acres of private land within their historic reservation boundaries for ecosystem restoration and economic development.

Now nation to nation talks are coalescing around the He Sapa Restoration Act that would remand public lands to the Oyate with hopes of introducing it in the US Congress in 2025 but some elders believe it doesn't go far enough.

The bill would not affect the titles of private lands. Though those lands would be cataloged as part of the land identification process, they would remain in possession of the title holders. As drafted, the act does not relinquish any existing claims for treaty land and seeks to establish a pathway for land return to tribes. The group will fine-tune the draft over the next few months and seek sponsors. Philimon Two Eagle, Sicangu Lakota, attended on behalf of the Sicangu Treaty Council. Two Eagle, the council’s executive director, said the treaty council decided not to support the legislation over concerns it would diminish the original treaties and be dead on arrival. “We want these people to vacate our land. There is no such thing as land back. Vacate these lands,” Two Eagle said. [Native leaders draft bill to regain some of sacred Black Hills]

Colorado's mineral extraction industries have effectively stolen over $500 billion from the Apache of Oklahoma, Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Comanche, Kiowa, Northern Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Shoshone, Ute Tribe of Utah, Southern Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute. Under the 1906 Antiquities Act and the America the Beautiful initiative President Joe Biden has moved to create the 400,000-acre Dolores River Canyon Country National Monument in Mesa and Montrose counties in Colorado but imagine the blowback if Pres. Biden remands that land back to the Ute Nation.

Pres. Biden has invited representatives from the 574 federally recognized tribes to what is likely the last Tribal Nations Summit for at least four years since the Orange Julius will likely cancel it again like he did during his other term. During the summit Joe might even order the release of Leonard Peltier.

Last month I caught up with leaders from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe about their 8 year battle against DAPL https://t.co/L3yT0SdzXT

— Amelia Schafer (@ameliaschafers) December 4, 2024