Here is a review of a book which might be interesting to some here. I copied the entire review from one of the book clubs I belong to. Have heard of the Author's reputation and thought even though everything we read should be taken with a grain of salt some here might like to comment if this book would / might be worth while.  
 
 
The Lakotas and the Black Hills
 
Review by Elliott West
 
For most readers, the western Sioux, or Lakotas, instantly conjure up images of war and bloodshed on the Great Plains—George Custer’s disaster in 1876, the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890 and clashes with Indian rivals like the Crows. The fight on the Little Big Horn alone has inspired scores of histories, novels and films. The real casualty of all this battling has been a full appreciation of the Lakotas, their long and varied history and their persistent efforts to defend a physical and cultural birthright.
 
Now Jeffrey Ostler has given us a fine corrective, a thorough and concise history of the Lakota experience from their earliest years on the northern plains until the present. At its center is the spiritual pivot of the Lakota homeland, the Black Hills (Paha Sapa). Lakota tradition says they and the bison emerged from underground into the hills, while anthropologists write that they migrated there sometime in the latter 18th century out of the woodlands and prairies to the east. Whatever the particulars, when Lewis and Clark passed up the Missouri River in 1804 they found the Lakotas playing the muscular middleman among plains tribes dealing furs with the British out of Canada. Over the next couple of generations they consolidated their power and with their hundreds of horseback warriors dominated the country within a long radius from the Black Hills.
 
Ostler gracefully sketches the life they devised around a seasonal rhythm, in the warm months hunting bison and other game and performing the Sun Dance, their “corporate prayer,” and during winter hunkering down, repairing weapons and tools, tanning hides and telling stories. The Lakotas were long familiar with how the expanding United States could bring troubles and opportunities to that life, but beginning in the 1840s, first with the surge of overland migration and then gold and silver rushes in the Rocky Mountains, the pressures and problems increased enormously. Ostler walks us through the familiar gathering crisis, stressing the central strategy of preserving command of the Black Hills and the grasslands around it. By their sharp resistance to the army after the Civil War and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, they seemed to have won a rare Indian victory, but then came the worst possible development—the discovery of gold in the Paha Sapa—and the bloody months of 1876-77 that have so dominated our awareness of the Lakota story.
 
Nearly half of Ostler’s book covers the years since then, and it is here that he makes his prime contribution. The Lakotas continued to fight to win back their sacred hills lost in the war, now through an alien legal and political system. Their artful maneuvering and growing savvy make for a story as fascinating in its way as their victory over Custer. They won this fight too, insofar as courts agreed the hills were illegally taken and awarded a sizeable compensation. The money is untouched, however, as the Lakotas insist on the return of a place they consider as sacrosanct as Jerusalem to a Muslim, Christian or Jew.

I like it, EM. Very subtle, deep and dangerous  

We - the white guys - have traditions. And we are proud of them. And we celebrate them - this last part is most important, because
of the alcohohol involved in these celebrations. If there's a chance of alcohol-consumption, let's remeber the day, hour or second and call it a tradition. A longhaired guy gets crucified 2000 years ago - okay, that's a tradition-potentiel, let's celebrate him at least once a year - get hammered and fight with our family and relatives. Traditions are ....... hangovers.
 

Here is the book I mentioned..I just ordered it...looks interesting
 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Soil-Soul-People-versus-Corporate/dp/1854108026/ref=sr_1 _2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279065265&sr=1-2
 
 
`Soil and Soul` is a story of one thing and many things; the Earth and its people. Alastair McIntosh provides us with an object lesson and demonstration inhow the welfare of the later is inseperable from that of the former. He demonstrates this by telling the story of how crofters, on the Hebridean island of Eigg, reclaimed their custodianship of the land from the Laird (Lord) and ended nearly 1000 years of injustice and feudal land tenure. He also tells the story, as yet unresolved, of the worlds largest aggregates consortiums attempts to gain licence to hollow out a superquarry on the Isle of Harris which would result, as one local put it, turn Harris into `..the gravel pit of Europe`.
 
`Soil and soul` is, though, more than the lineal accounting of eco campaigning and legal battles from an author who was intimately involved with both issues. Much of the book is given over to matters of history, theology, feminism and ecology. McIntosh begins with the tale of how Kings and corporations, power and wealth, have, over the centuries, in the Scottish Highlands obscenely stolen from, terrorised and bullied it's indigenous people. In the process, he suggests, was the wilful destruction of native spirituality and self sufficiency all in the pursuit of power and worship of Mamon. In one sense then it is the history, writ small, of much of the history of the world.
 

Agree totally there have been so many destructive methods placed on Mother Earth generally because of modern lifestyles which have been developed mainly because of European influences. There was a Sociology - Anthropologist Professor who challenged us as an entire class to determine what Turtle Island would be like today IF no contact from any European or other Foreign Country had discovered Turtle Island.
 
This was a very interesting along with being a unique chance to rethink how The People would have adapted and evolved their various Societies / Cultures over the years.  Certainly made the entire class  more aware as to what might have developed and been.
 
Something to think about  

How true because all of us need to join in banding together to do what we think is the right thing to do. Many years ago there was this song from Billy Jack which impressed me -- to a great extent :
 
 
One Tin Soldier (The Legend of Billy Jack)
by Lambert-Potter, sung by Coven
 
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.
 
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They'd have it for their very own.
 
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
 
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they'd kill.
 
Came an answer from the kingdom,
"With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there."
 
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
 
Now the valley cried with anger,
"Mount your horses! Draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.
 
Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it...
"Peace on Earth" was all it said.
 
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
 
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
 
Still wonder after all these years what -- if any good -- I've done. But then I will hopefully find out the answer when THE GREAT MYSTERY decides it is time for me to know / understand.  
 
THANK YOU for sharing, along with incouraging others.  

Maybe the colonists felt they could take better care of them  

Leksi Kinajin, this is something I've been thinking about from time to time.  
 
By dominant societies own definition it appears they were stolen because they are now Government 'owned' property and a price put on them.
 
Do the Lakota and others believe nothing was ever owned before they came so nothing was ever stolen...only unjustly occupied by an invader that does not care to treat it with the same respect?  
 
I ask this, because I've heard it said and quoted (without hearing it directly) ..that there is no word in the Lakota language for 'owning the Earth' ?