Wyoming commemorates historic 1868 Native American treaty that the state failed to honor

For many Native American tribes in the West, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 stands out in a list of broken agreements. It wasn't the treaty that was so bad. Settlers and soldiers were pressing deeper into Indian lands in a rapid expansion of the U.S., and the Fort Laramie treaty offered a deal for survival, for sovereignty and a government-to-government relationship with the United States. Then it was broken.

At the Fort Laramie National Historic Site in Goshen County, a commemoration of the signing of the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty includes exhibits, demonstrations and a series of talks on the history of the treaty through Tuesday, the Casper Star-Tribune reported Saturday. There will be Native American food, dances and trips across the river to the site of the signing. Some tribal members will be camping out at the fort during the event, recreating what their families did 150 years ago.

But it's not a celebration for native groups.

"This is the treaty that my nation looks to as the definitive treaty between the United States and the Lakota," said Jeffrey Means, a professor of Native American history at the University of Wyoming and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. "It created this expectation for the Lakota especially, but also for all these other tribes that were involved, that this was their land."

But the two sides didn't view the agreement the same.

"The Lakota saw the United States as entering into an agreement where this land would be the native nations," he said. "The U.S. saw (reservations) as temporary.... They were supposed to be temporary until the Native Americans either died or were assimilated into U.S. culture." ...