The Lakotas and the Black Hills

This concise and evenhanded review of Lakota Sioux claims to the Black Hills is a welcome addition to American Indian legal literature. Expanding upon the very personal telling in Edward Lazarus's Black Hills/White Justice, Ostler (history, Univ. of Oregon; The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee) studies the full history of Sioux efforts to reclaim the Black Hills, right up to the present. Balancing many points of view in a succinct text, Ostler discusses claims of other American Indian nations, Black Hills gold and its historic significance, the creation of Mount Rushmore, the Sioux victory in the U.S. court of claims and subsequent refusal to accept a cash settlement, the American Indian Movement's (AIM's) 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, and a congressional attempt to turn over federal lands to the tribes.