Black Hills/White Justice: The Sioux Nation versus the United States, 1775 to the Present

Abstract

Hills/White Justice: 'Lazarus is a compelling writer...[He] learned the story of the Black Hills at the family dinner table, straight from the mouth of the Sioux Nation counsel' - Great Plains Quarterly. '[Lazarus'] judgment is sound; his prose fluent; and his research exhaustive' - Wilcomb E. Washburn, late director, American Studies Program, Smithsonian Institution. 'Black Hills/White Justice is both explicitly and implicitly appalling, a vivid portrait of our myopic, arrogant, militaristic government - unchanged since the nineteenth century. I hope it finds many readers' - Evan S. Connell, author of Son of the Morning Star.Black Hills/White Justice tells of the longest active legal battle in United States history: the century-long effort by the Sioux nations to receive compensation for the seizure of the Black Hills. Edward Lazarus, son of one of the lawyers involved in the case, traces the tangled web of laws, wars, and treaties that led to the wresting of the Black Hills from the Sioux and their subsequent efforts to receive compensation for the loss. His account covers the Sioux nations' success in winning the largest financial award ever offered to an Indian tribe and their decision to turn it down and demand nothing less than the return of the land. Edward Lazarus is the author of Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles inside the Supreme Court. He lives in Los Angeles.