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U.S. must return land seized in 1877 to Lakota (Contra Costa, Calif. Times)

A column by Ned Blackhawk says today is a sad day in American-Indian — and American — history.

On that day 130 years ago, the federal government broke its own laws and eventually used military force to seize illegally the once vast reservation homelands of Lakota communities known as the Black Hills. Blackhawk is associate professor of history and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.