Date of Award
Winter 2024
Abstract
This thesis traces the history of Sioux-American competition for the Black Hills region of South Dakota from the Lakota’s discovery of the mountains in 1776 to the aftermath of United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, a landmark 1980 Supreme Court case that awarded financial compensation to the tribes for the unconstitutional seizure of sacred lands. It argues that treaty negotiations in the nineteenth century – and attempts to resolve treaty-based disputes in the twentieth – testify to an international quality in the Sioux-American relationship. Far from passive victims of American expansion, it shows that Lakotas have consistently developed, debated, deployed, and discarded a variety of policies in order to both resist and adapt to shifting geopolitical realities. Using a combination of Indigenous historical perspectives and American documentary sources read against the grain, this thesis takes a parallel focus on the development of Sioux and federal diplomatic policy. It demonstrates that the Sioux people have always seen their claim to the Black Hills – even when others have not – as a symbol of their political independence and national sovereignty.
First Advisor
Kurk Dorsey
Second Advisor
Jessica Lepler
Third Advisor
Eliga Gould
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Recommended Citation
Lelaure, Elliott, "UNITED STATES V. SIOUX NATION OF INDIANS: A HISTORY OF INDIGENOUS DIPLOMACY IN THE BLACK HILLS" (2024). Master's Theses and Capstones. 1921.
https://scholars.unh.edu/thesis/1921