Law Enforcement Descended On Standing Rock A Year Ago And Changed the DAPL Fight Forever
►https://theintercept.com/2017/10/27/law-enforcement-descended-on-standing-rock-a-year-ago-and-changed-the-
“Unceded land is land that was never given over or conceded; it’s essentially stolen land,” Nick Estes, a Lakota historian, told The Intercept. Cannonball Ranch, specifically, was “illegally settled,” Estes said, and acquired as private property through squatters’ rights.
Only an act of Congress can abridge a treaty, opening unceded territory for non-native settlement, Estes said — but that never happened with this particular land, the status of which remains disputed. Disputes over unceded land have arisen before — most notably over the Black Hills, which resulted in a 1980 Supreme Court decision that offered a monetary settlement as reparation for the settled land — but no actual land restitution. Indigenous people have refused to take that money.
