Black Hills still not for sale, Oglala Sioux Tribe rejects FOIA request to unseal value
Star Comes Out: ‘Resolve the Sioux land claims without having to sell out our homeland’
Contributing Editor
A replica of a Forest Service sign in a parade float bears words from the U.S. Supreme Court opinion about the theft of Black Hills treaty lands. / Courtesy, Black Hills Clean Water Alliance
Oglala Sioux Tribal President Frank Star Comes Out says U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum should deny a major media request to reveal the Black Hills Claim accounting record. Speculation is that interest earnings are worth over $1 billion on the $102 million land payment that federal courts adjudged to the Sioux Nation 50 years ago.
The Oglala and their six fellow Teton Sioux bands never took the 1974 federal claim money offer for the theft of their Black Hills treaty-guaranteed territory. So, the Interior Department, as their legal trustee, invested the nations’ behalf through its Bureau of Trust Funds Administration.
CNN Investigative Unit reporter Casey Tolan, a data journalist, filed the request under Freedom of Information Act terms. He asked the Interior Department for “the most recent statement available listing the total amount of money held in trust by the department.” Oglala leaders recently rejected the idea after being notified by the department.
When Interior officials notified the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Star Comes Out said the request is “just an underhanded way to ultimately get the Oglala Sioux Tribe to implicitly accept the 1980 Black Hills Claim.’’ He told Buffalo’s Fire: “All the Sioux tribes have informed the United States since 1980 that ‘The Black Hills Are Not For Sale’.”
The Indian Claims Court determined the award in 1974, six years later the Supreme Court affirmed it. However, the Oglala Nation never agreed to any settlement of the Black Hills Claim, Star Comes Out said in the official response to Interior’s February notification.
The Oglala told Interior in their March response that the department has a fiduciary duty to keep all the information requested by CNN confidential: Case law supports that argument under Exemption 4 of the FOIA.
The response, obtained by Buffalo’s Fire through official channels, asserts that “disclosure of the information in question would harm the interests of the tribes.” It says that “wide dissemination of the amount of money in the Black Hills award trust account would likely lead to the Sioux tribes being subject to harder bargaining in commercial dealings and transactions with third parties.”
Furthermore, disclosure would help individuals “to put pressure on the tribes to make immediate distributions from the Black Hills award trust.” That would challenge tribal leadership policies that such distributions run counter to tribes’ long term interests, it says.
Asked for a comment, Star Comes Out said: “Why now? Why is CNN all of a sudden interested in the current balance of the 1980 Black Hills award, especially during the Trump Administration’s recent actions to cut government appropriations for Indian tribes. I would like to know who prompted Mr. Tolan to make the FOIA request.”
Tolan did not answer Buffalo’s Fire attempts to ask about his actions.
“I believe, however, the Sioux tribes would be open to engaging in nation-to-nation consultations under mutually agreed-to protocols with new Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to find innovative ways to resolve the Sioux land claims without having to sell out our homelands.”
Oglala Sioux Tribal Treasurer Cora White Horse sent the Interior Department a notarized affidavit stating she cannot release the information without a tribal council resolution.
“The Black Hills statement information requested by CNN has … never been disclosed to the public nor been shared with any private commercial entity, nonprofit organization, or with any state, local, or other tribal government,” White Horse stated in the affidavit.
Furthermore she said, the information is “subject to physical security measures and cybersecurity measures instituted and maintained by my office to prevent the trust account statements from either being hacked or otherwise leaked or disclosed in an unauthorized manner to others.”
Oglala Sioux Tribal Attorney Mario Gonzalez drafted the tribal response to the CNN FOIA request — in consultation with President Star Comes Out and Treasurer White Horse. Gonzalez was the attorney who stopped payment of Black Hills Claim money to the Oglala Sioux Tribe in 1980. His litigation in the 1973 Claims Distribution Act ultimately kept the money in trust for all the Sioux tribes with no call for them to cede the territory.
Star Comes Out told Buffalo’s Fire, “We will never sell out our holy lands, the Black Hills, to the United States for monetary compensation.”
He said: “I believe, however, the Sioux tribes would be open to engaging in nation-to-nation consultations under mutually agreed-to protocols with new Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to find innovative ways to resolve the Sioux land claims without having to sell out our homelands.”
The Oglala Sioux and Standing Rock Sioux tribal councils “have a pending request for such consultations with Secretary Burgum,” Star Comes Out said.
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