Sunday's story about the Little Shell Tribe's battle for federal recognition essentially could have been written 100 years ago. For this tribe, enough really is enough.

Although the greatest number of tribal members live in the Great Falls region, more than 200 are long-time Helena-area residents. They aren't looking for a reservation, but they desperately need the education and health programs and other rights and benefits that federal recognition would bring.

According to historian Nicholas Vrooman, interim director of the Helena Indian Alliance, the ancestors of the tribe lost their status when they refused to sign a treaty in 1892. That was a very different world, but ever since that time the outcome of their attempts to gain federal recognition have remained depressingly the same.

Back around 1916 Montana artist Charles Russell was among those working to help the Little Shell gain recognized tribal status. More recently, in 1978 and 1985, the tribe petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs, without success. They re-applied in 1996, and in 2000 received provisional recognition.

This week, perhaps because Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., had earlier introduced a bill to give the Little Shell recognition, the BIA sent an investigator to Montana to once again examine the tribe's request. Perhaps tribal members finally can be optimistic that even if the BIA again fails to act, Congress will at last grant their request.

We should hope so. This long echo of the fate of plains Indians in the final decades of the 19th Century must come to an end before we get much farther into the 21st.