[News] Cheyenne River Sioux Chair Offers to Rip Down Mount Rushmore—"Free of Charge... By Myself If I Must"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/01/cheyenne-river-sioux-chair-offers-rip-down-mount-rushmore-free-charge-myself-if-i?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=email_this
Cheyenne
River Sioux Chair Offers to Rip Down Mount Rushmore—"Free of Charge... By
Myself If I Must"
Common Dreams - July 1, 2020
------------------------------

Describing the iconic South Dakota mountain carving that depicts the heads
of famous U.S presidents as nothing but a monument to "our molesters," the
chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation Harold Frazier this week said
he would willingly tear down Mount Rushmore if given the chance—with or
without help—and pay for its destruction personally.

As local communities, states, and nations worldwide contend with the
legacies of racism, colonialism, and exploitation chiseled or molded into
monuments of historic figures with bloody and contemptuous pasts, Frazier
said in a statement
<https://twitter.com/CRSTChairman/status/1277961875355865091/photo/1>
Monday, "Nothing stands as a greater reminder to the Great Sioux Nation of
a country that cannot keep a promise or treaty than the faces carved into
our sacred land on what the United States calls Mount Rushmore."

"This brand on our flesh needs to be removed and I am willing to do it free
of charge to the United States, by myself if I must."
—Harold Frazier, Cheyenne River Sioux Nation With President Donald Trump
planning to visit the Mount Rushmore National Memorial
<https://www.doi.gov/blog/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-presidential-tribute>site
on Friday to celebrate the July 4th holiday
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/politics/trump-mt-rushmore-fourth-of-july-coronavirus/index.html>,
Frazier expressed outrage over the insulting of nature of the event, which
will include a fireworks display, as well as the monument itself. Sitting
on disputed land that tribes claim remains theirs under treaties signed in
the 19th century, the rockface monument—completed in 1941 and made a
national landmark—depicts George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore
Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

"We are not being forced to witness the lashing of our land with pomp,
arrogance, and fire hoping our sacred lands will survive," said Frazier.
"This brand on our flesh needs to be removed and I am willing to do it free
of charge to the United States, by myself if I must."

The millions of visitors who visit the monument each year, said Frazier,
"look upon the faces of those presidents and extoll the virtues that they
believe make America the country it is today. Lakota see the faces of the
men who lied, cheated, and murdered innocent people whose only crime was
living on the land they wanted to steal." He said that while the visitors
have the privilege of moving along when their visit ends, the local tribes
"are the ones who live under the stare of those who have wronged us."

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"When I can remove those faces from our land," said Fraizer, "I believe I
would not be alone."

There is also broader contempt over Trump's visit with a number of
Indigenous tribes in the region saying it would be better if the president
stayed away. Critics have specifically raised alarm over huge crowds coming
to the area amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic as well as the toxic and
damaging impact of a large fireworks display, especially on the local
ecology.

"The lands on which that mountain is carved and the lands he's about to
visit belong to the Great Sioux nation under a treaty signed in 1851 and
the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and I have to tell him he doesn't have
permission from its original sovereign owners to enter the territory at
this time," said
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/01/mount-rushmore-donald-trump-sioux>
Oglala Sioux president Julian Bear Runner in an interview with the
*Guardian* published Wednesday.

"As leader of the United States he has obligation to … honor the treaties
that are the supreme law of the land," Bear Runner added. "It's going to
cause an uproar if he comes here. People are going to want to exercise
their Frst Amendment rights to protest and we do not want to see anyone get
hurt or the lands be destroyed."

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