As a young Lakota man, Gary Montana's elders told him about the Black Hills.

About the land the Lakota considered sacred and believed had been stolen from them. About a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision that awarded the Sioux people more than $146 million for the theft by the government of the hills and lands east of them.

And about the Sioux people's refusal to accept the money.

The reason, they told him, was simple: To accept the money meant accepting the loss of the Sioux Nation's sacred land.

"The hills are not for sale, and we will not accept any payment for them," said Montana, an attorney from Osseo, Wis.

Sioux people have wrestled for years with the question of whether they should take the money.

Now, a Yankton attorney is resubmitting the question.

On Saturday, about 80 Native people attended a meeting at a church in Sioux City, Iowa, where attorney Doug Kettering spoke to them about trying to get their share of the Black Hills settlement.

"They're favorable," Kettering said of those who attended the meeting. "I think people are interested."

With interest, that settlement stands at more than $863 million, according to Huffington Post columnist Tim Giago.

Other sources could not confirm that number. The staff of Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., was unable to provide a number.

Tom Young, a fiduciary trust officer with the U.S. Department of Interior Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians in Rapid City, said he has the number but can provide it only to tribal council members.

Figures from Kettering indicate the total amount could be well over $1 billion.

No opposition was voiced at the meeting. And several people approached by a reporter at the meeting said they are in favor of accepting the settlement money.

Michelle Barrientos, a Santee Sioux from Sioux City who attended the meeting, said she worries about how she'll pay her college tuition and take care of her five children.

"I'm not out to get rich," she said. "I need the money."

Kettering said he hasn't decided whether to file an intervention action seeking to have the courts or government address the settlement question. He said he wants to gauge how much interest there is among Sioux people first.

He plans to host meetings later in the South Dakota communities of Sioux Falls, Yankton, Flandreau and Mobridge.

He said he was approached by Sioux people who wanted to accept the settlement money, people who felt their own grandparents had failed to benefit from the large pot of money sitting in the fund.

If 90,000 Sioux tribal members sign up, each could get about $12,000, he said.

Kettering said it's OK if people disagree with paying out the settlement. But he wants to help those who wish to get their share.

"We're just trying to get as many people as possible," he said.

Most people left the meeting Saturday with copies of the agreement that retains the representation of Kettering's law firm.

According to the agreement, clients would pay $20 each as a retainer. The firm and counsel of record would then be paid 20 percent of all proceeds at the conclusion of any court proceedings.

But some wonder whether a legal action could really free up the settlement money.

Young, the trust officer in Rapid City, said the various Sioux tribes who were awarded the money would first have to agree on how it would be distributed before the money would be dispersed.

If the tribes failed to agree on a plan to accept the money, Congress could enact legislation that would disperse the money, he said, citing the Indian Judgement Funds Distribution Act of 1973.

Young said he knew of at least two failed attempts to enact such legislation in Congress, the first of which occurred in 1988, when then-South Dakota Sen. Larry Pressler introduced a bill to disperse the money.

No action was taken on Pressler's bill.

Then, in 1990, Rep. Matthew Martinez of California introduced a similar bill. No action was taken on that bill either, Young said.

For his part, Montana said he questions the motives of anyone who attempts to accept payment for the Black Hills.

"I personally, as a Native American attorney, will oppose vigorously any attempted distribution of those funds to any individual or tribe," he said.

Debra White Plume, an Oglala Lakota activist, said she had heard about the meeting but did not attend.

"In our traditional way of thought, we have a trickster named Iktomi," White Plume said. "I think that's the role this law firm is playing. They're trying to trick our people into being foolish, because only a foolish person would accept money for the Black Hills."

White Plume said she favors a resolution such as that proposed by Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., in the 1980s, which would have returned 1.3 million acres of the Black Hills national forest land to the Sioux people.

"We attempted that 20 years ago as a way to peacefully settle this issue between our people and the United States government, because we knew it wasn't the current landowners' problem. It was the government's problem," she said. White Plume said the majority of Oglala people would not accept the money.

"In the face of this great poverty, our spiritual connection to the Black Hills is much more powerful. The money would be gone in a day or two, and we would have to face our ancestors."