Eventually the case reached the Supreme Court in 1979, over fifty years after the first filing of the claim. During this time an Indian rights movement was gaining momentum. The American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied Wounded Knee, the site of a massacre in 1890. This brought national attention to the plight of Native Americans in general and specifically that of the Lakota people. The idea of receiving payment for their sacred Black Hills became unacceptable where once it was merely undesirable; and so despite the Supreme Court’s finding that the seizure was an illegal taking and ordering an award of over $100 million, the Sioux Nation—some of the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere—refused the money (Lenane,
