Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/26/native-americans-to-protest-tr.html
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“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today,”
To which the White House responds: “why do you think we decided to go there? We have to send a message of solidarity with our voter base.”
Related:
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Forty years ago I was on the plains of South Dakota for the Survival Gathering. I did not go to see Mt. Rushmore.
But the last day we did go nto the Paha Sapa. What acontrast with the plains, I couid see why the hills are important.
The Fort Laramie of 1868 recognized the importance. Except a bit later gold was found in the Hills, so the treaty violated. Custer died as a result.
The Lakota won a ruling a long time later, but the Hills have not been returned. They refuse to take the monetary compensation.
I still have a small stone I picked up in the Hills.
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From the Associated Press: Many Native American activists say the Rushmore memorial is as reprehensible as the many Confederate monuments being toppled around the nation.
What “many Native Americans say” about this grandstanding abomination is undeniably true. Especially in a pluralistic country that claims as a core value the equality of all of its people, including the indigenous ones.
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many years ago i was on the Rosebud reservation for work, and one of my Lakota friends said that they all refer to Rushmore as “The Shrine of Hypocrisy,” because of all the broken treaties. I’ve referred to it as that ever since. of course trump is going to go there for the 4th… of course. ugh.
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The Park Service was (might still be for all I know) doing a lottery for tickets to the event. You did have to pay a buck to enter (which went to the Park Service). I’ve got friends who are local to Rapid City who entered for the purpose of not going to lessen the amount of outsiders coming in potentially bringing more COVID-19 into the area and not give Trump as big a crowd as he hoped. I know of at least 12 tickets that will be going unused.
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I desperately hope he doubles down and tries to make this a stand in for the Grand Dictator Spectacle he couldn’t pull off in DC. There has to be some flashpoint for Native issues to be recognized nationally as a core civil rights issue. If he throws enough gas on the fire, perhaps this will be a George Floyd-like acceleration.
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As has been pointed out elsewhere, dRumph has “toppled” most monuments than any current political movement.
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I was gonna draw attention to Xeni Jardin’s coverage here that, likewise, frames it as a matter of Indigenous point-of-view rather than, say, reality.
Native Americans who view the monument as a desecration of land stolen violently from tribes say they plan to protest.
(emphasis added)
*EDIT: to clarify, I’m saying that the reality is that a desecration occurred and that the coverage here obscures that reality, making it seem like “desecration” is just a perception of Indigenous people.
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Your meaning here is unclear. Are you saying that @xeni is saying that Native Americans aren’t engaged in reality or that YOU think that Native Americans aren’t engaged in reality? Because of course, they are making claims based on reality.
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I’m saying that @xeni’s writing here diminishes the desecration of Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe (The Six Grandfathers). Instead of saying the momument is a desecration of a sacred site for the Thítȟuŋwaŋ (aka Lakȟóta), the coverage here diminishes reality by referring to it as “Native Americans [viewing] the monument as a desecration.” But it is a desecration, it’s not just viewed as one.
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Cool. Thanks for clarifying your meaning here.
I’m not sure that was @xeni’s intent here, but I can understand how you’d see that.
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Except for that brief period in the early 80s when it was a symbol of Kryptonian supremacy.
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Haha it probably wasn’t! Even more important to point out the impact of people’s words when they conflict with our intent, in my opinion.
There’s a long history of dimishining Indigenous struggles and this is sort of a classic way of reporting oppression in a way that minimizes it, by framing it as just marginalized people’s perspective.
It’s also what the original commenter (that I responded to) was referring to with another source, and I was saying the same phenomenon is present here.
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I agree with that. The language we use matters, as they can often speak louder than our intent or meaning.
Sure.
That’s more than fair enough.
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Probably they should be just a bit careful with that – it would not be beyond Trump and his GOP and SC sycophants to do a Jackson on the remaining aboriginal peoples and there’s no telling where he might force-march them.
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