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<font size="1"><a href="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">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</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Cheyenne River Sioux Chair Offers to Rip Down Mount Rushmore—"Free of Charge... By Myself If I Must"</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Common Dreams - July 1, 2020<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-line-height4 gmail-reader-show-element" dir="ltr"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><div><div><p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://twitter.com/CRSTChairman/status/1277961875355865091/photo/1">statement</a>
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."</p>
<p><span>"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." <br>—Harold Frazier, Cheyenne River Sioux Nation</span> With President Donald Trump planning to visit the <a href="https://www.doi.gov/blog/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-presidential-tribute">Mount Rushmore National Memorial </a>site on Friday to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/politics/trump-mt-rushmore-fourth-of-july-coronavirus/index.html">celebrate the July 4th holiday</a>,
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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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."</p>
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</div><p>"When I can remove those faces from our land," said Fraizer, "I believe I would not be alone."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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," <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/01/mount-rushmore-donald-trump-sioux">said</a> Oglala Sioux president Julian Bear Runner in an interview with the <em>Guardian</em> published Wednesday.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
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