Sioux President Calls For Dismantling of Mount Rushmore
After South Dakota’s governor vowed to protect Mount Rushmore, at least one Native American leader is calling for it to be taken down.
Oglala Sioux President Julian Bear Runner says the monument in the Black Hills not only depicts four white men who led the founding and expansion of a nation at the expense of Natives, but it was carved on tribal land that did not rightfully belong to the government.
“To me, it’s a great sign of disrespect,” Bear Runner tells the Argus Leader, which digs into the history of the 19th-century treaties involved and ensuing legal fights. He wants the monument removed, though not dynamited because he fears damage to the land.
“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today,” Nick Tilsen, an activist and member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, tells the AP.
“It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land, then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide.”
Not helping is that the monument’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, was a reported member of the KKK, per KSTP. But as state Rep. Dusty Johnson sees it, “these presidents championed the cause of freedom.” He’s introduced legislation that would protect the monument ahead of President Trump’s July 3 visit, which will be protested by numerous Native American activists.
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Glenn go back down into your vaporized Dimethyltryptamine inhaling chamber and increase the concentration, clearly you are going through withdrawl allowing you to vomit total drivel, so do us rational people a favor and render yourself incapable of posting such completely crazy comments.
Hey idiot you and your fellow tribesman would still be living like your ancestors of 400 or 500 years ago is not for the brilliant innovations of the descendants of White Europeans you bunch of “Crazy Crybabies,” I know you all have your minds spread thin from inhaling vaporized Dimethyltryptamine but spend enough time outside of your vaping tee pee and maybe you will gain just enough of a grasp on reality to realize just how warped your thinking is.
I’ve been expecting that and of course Mr. Bear Runner is correct and the insult is real if not entirely intentional. It’s probably more insulting if the backers and creators of the monument were so self involved and arrogant they never considered the insult. I remember the indigenous peoples being referred to as “the vanishing race” in a Jackie Gleason skit in the early 50s without noticeable protest. Awareness that they are still here is finally growing. Augie Custer is not a hero any more.
But no, I don’t support blowing it up like the Taliban or Isis would do. All of history contains outrages. Do we tear down the churches and even cities built on top of pagan temples? Try to find national heroes free of vanity, arrogance and a sense of ethics informed by ages yet to come.
I once attended classes at a university campus built on land confiscated in the murder of the Jews of Vienna. It was enough to be aware of it and aware that you cannot send justice to the past in a time machine or punish past misdeeds by punishing the descendants of past offenders.
I’d love to see the Crazy Horse memorial finished and I’d like to see others and most of all I would like to start returning the huge amounts of former tribal land to those nations we stole it from or cheated them out of. That we can afford, I think.