A New Day : Education to Repatriation (Part 2)

The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty created the “Great Sioux Reservation” - comprising the western part of South Dakota including He Sapa - which was to be reserved exclusively for the “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the Sioux Nation. By 1877, after the discovery of gold by George Armstrong Custer’s sanctioned expedition, this treaty was swiftly broken when the Black Hills were confiscated by the U.S. Congress. Episode 6 Part 2 begins with a detailed explanation of the cases related to the Black Hills land claim that culminated in 1980’s United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians Supreme Court case.

The next and final segment of this episode discusses 1990’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act(NAGPRA) which was enacted “to establish the rights of Indian tribes and their lineal descendants to obtain repatriation of certain human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony from federal agencies or museums.”