Oahe Dam and Pick-Sloan: Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Lower Brule and Crow Creek

What happened

The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty set apart the Great Sioux Reservation "for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation" of the Sioux nations. By the 1950s the reservations that came from it, including Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Lower Brule and Crow Creek, lay along the Missouri River.

In the Flood Control Act of 1944, Congress approved the Pick-Sloan program of dams on the Missouri. A Senate report says that in 1948 the Army Corps of Engineers took possession of Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe land along the river and began building Oahe Dam. By the time it was dedicated in 1962, four reservation communities were flooded, 104,492 acres of tribal land were inundated, and 181 families (30% of the tribal population) had been forced to relocate. The tribe lost some 90% of its timber, and it received none of the flood control or low-cost power the program was designed to bring. Congress compensated the tribe in 1954. The tribe had requested $23.5 million; the law authorized $10.6 million. On average non-Indians received $49.22 per acre for agricultural land, and the tribe received $21.49.

Later Congresses acknowledged the shortfall and created trust funds: $149.2 million for Fort Berthold and $90.6 million for Standing Rock (1992), $27.5 million for Crow Creek (1996) and $39.3 million for Lower Brule (1997). This is about compensation, not a court finding that the dam breached the 1868 treaty. Public Law 106-511 (November 13, 2000) cites a Comptroller General determination of $290,723,000 as appropriate compensation for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe's land.

Good to know. No court has held that the dam breached the 1868 treaty; the treaty connection is this page's reading.

Summarized with AI assistance from 3 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error