In July of this year, the remains of nine Sicangu Oyate children of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, were returned home to the Rosebud after 142 years, through largely the efforts of the Sicangu Oyate Youth Council. You have to wonder why it took so long when these were marked graves with historical documentation. I can’t help but think others had tried to get the children returned during that lengthy time period too those being the immediate and extended family of the children, reservation officials, sympathetic politicians, and assertive tribal representatives, but as in so many cases of Native rights prior to this, they were systemically deterred. Ponder the 142-years before the Sicangu Oyate received the bodily remains of these young people who suffered and died of disease and malnutrition while ‘in the care’ of people thinking they were cleansing them of their ‘Indianness.’ These were children who were wrenched from everything they ever knew of fam