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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/25/mount-rushmore-oglala-sioux-president-removal-president-trump/3198922001/">https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/25/mount-rushmore-oglala-sioux-president-removal-president-trump/3198922001/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Oglala Sioux President says Mount Rushmore should be 'removed': What's behind the site's controversial history</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Lisa Kaczke and Jonathan Ellis - June 25, 2020<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-line-height4 gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p>As
President Trump prepares to visit Mount Rushmore next week, a South
Dakota tribal president is preparing a memo of disapproval.</p><p>Oglala
Sioux President Julian Bear Runner says the president failed to consult
with tribal leaders about the visit to the Black Hills, which the Sioux
consider part of their Great Sioux Reservation, land that was never
ceded to the United States. Bear Runner said Trump’s visit requited
government-to-government consultation between the tribes and the federal
government.</p><p>And one other thing: Bear Runner thinks Mount Rushmore should come down.</p><p>“I
don’t believe it should be blown up, because it would cause more damage
to the land,” he said, noting that Indian artifacts could be damaged.
But there are other methods to take down the monument that would have
less environmental impact.</p><p>“I agree,” he said. “Removed but not blown up.”</p><p>His
comments come amid a wave of statues of early U.S. leaders that have
been torn down following protests of racial injustice. On social media,
some have criticized the destruction, which has largely come at the
hands of unchecked mobs as opposed to deliberative decisions by elected
leaders. Protesters initially targeted statues of Confederate leaders,
but the destruction has expanded to leaders and heroes of the Union, as
well as pre-Civil War figures.</p><p>When some suggested that Mount Rushmore might be next, Gov. Kristi Noem Tweeted, <a href="https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2020/06/23/mount-rushmore-gov-kristi-noem-taking-down-monument-not-my-watch/3241938001/" target="_blank">“Not on my watch.”</a></p><p>Mount
Rushmore carries special significance for Great Plains Indians: It
depicts the faces of four white American leaders who presided over the
founding and expansion of European descended ancestors throughout the
United States. It was built on land that the tribes still claim
ownership to via treaty with the United States.</p><p>Bear Runner said the monument was built without any consultation or approval from Sioux leaders of that era.</p><p>“To me, it’s a great sign of disrespect,” he said.</p><p>His
view isn't universally shared in Indian Country. O.J. Semans, an
executive director of Four Directions, a Native American voting advocacy
group, said that while a lot of Sioux Indians want the monument
removed, it could also serve a purpose to teach the thousands of
visitors their story with exhibits and films.</p><p>"Doing that, I
think, would get more people to understand the actual hurt that Natives
are going through every time they see those images," he said. "The
atrocities aren't going away."</p><p>That's particularly true of
Lincoln, said Semans, who is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. While
Lincoln is revered for ending slavery, he is viewed among the Sioux as a
president who oversaw the largest mass execution in American history
when 38 Sioux were hung in Minnesota during the Dakota War of 1862.
Mount Rushmore, Semans said, should be used to tell that story.</p><p>"I'm
not saying that those who want to see it removed are wrong," Semans
said. "I can understand how they can come to that conclusion. But I'm
trying to be a realist."</p><p>"This is really a learning moment for the
people who are in charge of Mount Rushmore to right a wrong," he added.
"Removing a statue doesn't right a wrong."</p><p>The controversy over
monuments and statues has grown so strong that South Dakota Rep. Dusty
Johnson introduced legislation on Thursday to protect Mount Rushmore.</p><p>“These
presidents championed the cause of freedom,” said Johnson, a
Republican. “Those seeking to remove these iconic faces are undermining
the contributions these leaders made in pursuit of a more perfect union.
Removal would do nothing to move our country forward.”</p><p>Into this
comes the July 3 fireworks display and President Trump, who has been
criticized for disparaging minorities. Several groups led by Native
American activists are planning protests for the visit. </p><p>"I'm not
really happy that he's coming to pollute our Black Hills," said Rep.
Shawn Bordeaux, a Democrat and the chair of the State-Tribal Relations
Committee and a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.</p><p>Mount Rushmore
was created to draw tourism to South Dakota and its carving took place
between 1927 and 1941. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum intended for Mount
Rushmore to stand for America's greatness, and it's referred to as the
Shrine of Democracy. However, stories in recent years have highlighted
Borglum's <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/sordid-history-mount-rushmore-180960446/" target="_blank">ties to white supremacy</a>, possibly joining the Ku Klux Klan, his <a href="https://www.omaha.com/lifestyles/the-omaha-boy-who-went-on-to-sculpt-mt-rushmore-tussle-with-hitler-and-maybe/article_dcefd15e-f5a9-51a9-8a0f-a3145e8c5450.html" target="_blank">Confederate sculpture funded by the KKK</a> and that <a href="https://www.startribune.com/the-real-history-of-mount-rushmore/388715411/?refresh=true" target="_blank">the tribes have argued</a> for generations that the land was stolen from them.</p><p>“Mount
Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s
still alive and well in society today,” said Nick Tilsen, a member of
the Oglala Lakota tribe and the president of a local activist
organization called NDN Collective. “It’s an injustice to actively steal
Indigenous people’s land then carve the white faces of the conquerors
who committed genocide.”</p><h3>Why the tribes are upset about Mount Rushmore </h3><p>The mountain Mount Rushmore is carved into is known as the Six Grandfathers by the Lakota.</p><p>The Lakota consider the Black Hills, or Paha Sapa in Lakota, to be<a href="https://blackhillsvisitor.com/learn/paha-sapa-the-black-hills/" target="_blank"> the spiritual center </a>of the Great Sioux Reservation where their culture began and it was home to seven Lakota tribes.</p><p>The tribes were given the Black Hills in perpetuity in the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/sioux-treaty#:~:text=The%20Black%20Hills%20of%20Dakota,use%20by%20the%20Sioux%20people." target="_blank">Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868</a>.
But miners seeking gold came into the area in an expedition led by Gen.
George Custer in 1874. More miners encroached in the Hills once gold
was found and demanded the U.S. Army's protection.</p><p>Although the
Lakota and Northern Cheynne were victorious in the Battle of Little
Bighorn in 1876, by the following year, thousands of cavalrymen were
deployed to the area and began what the Lakota called the "sell or
starve" campaign: The Indian Appropriations Act of 1876 cut off all
rations until the Lakota ended hostilities and ceded the Black Hills to
the federal government. By the fall of 1877, the Lakota were <a href="http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/media/pdfs/untold_stories_mount_rushmore.pdf" target="_blank">under the control of federal agents</a> on reservations, their land confiscated by the federal government under the Agreement of 1877.</p><p>Tribes have attempted to reclaim the Black Hills several times in recent decades. </p><p>The
U.S. Court of Claims found in 1979 that the Sioux Nation was entitled
to $17.1 million in compensation due to the federal government's seizure
of the Black Hills. The following year, U.S. Supreme Court decided 8-1
that the federal government had violated the Fifth Amendment and the
tribes were entitled to compensation in <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-united-states-v-sioux-nation-of-indians" target="_blank">United State v. Sioux Nation of Indians</a>. The tribes declined the compensation because it would legally end their demand for the Black Hills to be returned to them. </p><p>Several
requests were denied in the early 1980s to return millions of acres of
the Black Hills to the tribes, as well as bills in Congress that would
have returned some of the land. </p><p>The effort to settle the land dispute was revived in 2009 and a <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/733435?ln=en" target="_blank">United Nations report in 2012</a> said that Indigenous land, including the Black Hills, should be returned. </p><h2>Trump's visit highlights controversy</h2><p>Tim
Giago, a journalist who is a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, said he
doesn’t see four great American leaders when he looks at the monument,
but instead four white men who either made racist remarks or initiated
actions that removed Native Americans from their land. Washington and
Jefferson both held slaves. Lincoln, though he led the abolition of
slavery, also approved the hanging of 38 Dakota men in Minnesota after a
violent conflict with white settlers there. Roosevelt is reported to
have said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are
dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are..”</p><p>The
monument has long been a “Rorschach test," said John Taliaferro, author
of “Great White Fathers,” a history of the monument. "All sorts of
people can go there and see it in different ways.”</p><p>The monument
often starts conversations on the paradox of American democracy — that a
republic that promoted the ideals of freedom, determination and
innovation also enslaved people and drove others from their land, he
said.</p><p>“If we’re having this discussion today about what American
democracy is, Mount Rushmore is really serving its purpose because that
conversation goes on there,” he said. “Is it fragile? Is it permanent?
Is it cracking somewhat?”</p><p>The monument was conceived in the 1920s
as a tourist draw for the new fad in vacationing called the road trip.
South Dakota historian Doane Robinson recruited Borglum, one of the
preeminent sculptors at the time, to abandon his work creating the Stone
Mountain Confederate Memorial in Georgia, which was to feature Robert
E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson.</p><p>Borglum was a
member of the Ku Klux Klan, according to Mount Rushmore historian and
writer Tom Griffith. Borglum joined the Klan to raise money for the
Confederate memorial, and Griffith argues his allegiance was more
practical than ideological. He left that project and instead spent years
in South Dakota completing Mount Rushmore.</p><p>Native American
activists have long staged protests at the site to raise awareness among
the history of the Black Hills, which were taken from them despite
treaties with the United States protecting the land. Fifty years ago
this summer a group of activists associated with an organization called
United Native Americans climbed to the top of the monument and occupied
it.</p><p>Quanah Brightman, who now runs United Native Americans, said
the activism in the 1970s grew out of the civil rights movement of the
1960s. He hopes a similar movement for Native Americans comes from the
Black Lives Matter movement.</p><p>“What people find here is the story
of America — it's multidimensional, it's complex,” Griffith said. “It’s
important to understand it was people just trying to do right as best
they knew it then.”</p><p id="gmail-article-body-p-last"><em>-- The Associated Press contribute to this report</em></p><p>Read
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