In the mid-70's, when Bill Bradley was a star forward for the New York Knicks, he went with his teammates Phil Jackson and Willis Reed to run a basketball clinic at the Oglala Sioux Indian reservation at Pine Ridge, S. D. There he learned the bitter history of the millions of acres of Sioux lands in South Dakota, stolen a century earlier, where now the faces of Presidents are carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore.
In the mid-70's, when Bill Bradley was a star forward for the New York Knicks, he went with his teammates Phil Jackson and Willis Reed to run a basketball clinic at the Oglala Sioux Indian reservation at Pine Ridge, S. D. There he learned the bitter history of the millions of acres of Sioux lands in South Dakota, stolen a century earlier, where now the faces of Presidents are carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore. He said then that if he was ever in a position to do it, he would get the land back for them.
A few years later, in 1978, Mr. Bradley was elected to the United States Senate from New Jersey. And today he announced he would try to make good on his promise by reintroducing legislation to restore to the Sioux 1.3 million acres of Black Hills land that the courts have determined were illegally wrested by President Grant under threat of starvation. 'The Heart of Everything'
''Bill Bradley came there and we all met him when he was a basketball player,'' recalled Charlotte A. Black Elk, a member of the Oglala Sioux, who is also secretary of the Black Hills Steering Committee, an organization of the eight recognized tribes of the original Sioux Nation. ''All the visitors would be taken over to meet my grandmother, Emma Plenty Wolf Hollow Horn, who was 96.''
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