By Mordecai Specktor
In the West
My wife, Maj-Britt, and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in January. And in July, we gathered the family for a belated celebration. This was our first all-family trip that included our two adorable little grandkids. Our son Max, who’s been living in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the past five years, flew in with Silvia, his Italian girlfriend. So, we were 10 people, in three cars.
Our vacation took us to the Badlands and Black Hills, in what is now called South Dakota. We spent most of a week in an Airbnb rental, a house high in the hills outside of Lead, the old gold mining center. I hadn’t been in the Black Hills in many years and was struck anew by the natural beauty.
I’ve been through Badlands National Park several times, but never saw so much green vegetation in the valleys and on the buttes. Beneficial rains have created a lush landscape in a place that usually looks parched — the Yellow Mounds area was especially beautiful.
We drove through Custer State Park and saw the buffalo herds; my youngest son, Isaac, and I drove up the Needles Highway and marveled at the spectacular rock formations. We also traveled through idyllic Spearfish Canyon, on the way north to Spearfish, where we enjoyed the scenic town park and the adjacent D.C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery, its pools teeming with various species of trout.
Max, Silvia and I drove north and into Wyoming one day to see the Bear Lodge (Devil’s Tower). We went on the 1.3-mile hike (in 95-degree heat) around the magma formation that rises some 1,300 feet above the Belle Fourche River.
While in the Black Hills, I thought about the sordid history of the place: the discovery of gold by former Union Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer’s expedition, in 1874; gold prospectors streaming into the area; and the U.S. government’s abrogation of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.
Again, there is much to see in the Black Hills. What you don’t see are Native people.
“They’re not meant to feel welcome in many instances,” commented Brett Lee Shelton (Oglala Lakota), a staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund (NARF). I had a recent phone chat with Shelton, who comes from Lake Creek, a village on the Pine Ridge reservation.
In late July, I contacted NARF about speaking to Shelton, regarding the Lakota Nation’s ongoing claim to the Black Hills.
In the way of background, I used to attend the International Indian Treaty Council conferences, the annual summer gatherings sponsored by the American Indian Movement. In 1980, I attended my first IITC conference, which was held that year on the Fort Belknap reservation.
During the conference, we learned that the U.S. Supreme Court had decided that the taking of the Black Hills had been illegal and $106 million was set aside in compensation, thus concluding a 60-year legal battle. This news upset the Lakota people attending the conference; some of them were weeping.
“The consensus of the people remains: that’s an un-compensable issue. They want the land back,” Shelton told me, regarding the ongoing dispute over the Black Hills.
According to press reports, the original $106 million settlement, which has been rejected by all the Lakota tribes, has accrued interest and now totals $1.3 billion.
I sought out Shelton because he had participated in a discussion earlier this year with Rebecca Clarren, author of The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance (Viking, 2023). My eldest son, Jonas, brought along a copy of Clarren’s book on our vacation. I read a bit of the book and later bought a copy. The book combines two of my longtime journalistic pursuits: American Indian issues and the story of the Jews.
Clarren investigates the lives of her Jewish ancestors who fled violent persecution in the Pale of Settlement (Eastern Europe) and landed in the American West. Her great-great grandparents took advantage of government “free land” giveaways and prospered out on the South Dakota prairie and as merchants in the Black Hills. Clarren’s informants include Lakota people whose forebears were victimized by U.S. government policies. Apart from the massacres and dispossession of the Lakota in the late-19th century, Clarren provides a cogent analysis of how the U.S. Congress continued to legislate the theft of Native land into the 20th century.
Shelton and I discussed the #landback movement, and I wondered how that can work in South Dakota, which is a very backwards state politically. Shelton laughed and agreed with my characterization. “Absolutely,” he said, and then mentioned that progress has been made in areas of land co-management, or co-stewardship, between tribes and U.S. government agencies.
There’s much more to say on the topic.
