In my youth, I climbed the back of Mt. Rushmore, stood on top of Abe’s head and looked down at Teddy’s nose.  I intended no disrespect to the Lakota people.  I had no idea that I was violating their sacred land.  In fact, I had no idea that they are the rightful owners of that land..  Furthermore, I did not learn about the KKK links to the monument until today.

On Friday, President Donald Trump will continue his tour of racism and colonialism, moving from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the sacred Black Hills. Make no mistake, this visit is an attack on Indigenous people.

I visit the Black Hills alongside many other Lakotas every year as part of a tradition we have maintained for thousands of years. Stretching from what is now known as South Dakota into Wyoming, they are a sacred place that I take my family and my children to, like the Vatican for Catholics or Mecca for Muslims. The hills are where I feel most connected to Creator.

The Black Hills are also the site of death, violence and war. They are home to Mount Rushmore — a monument to white colonizers carved by a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer into land stolen from us by the U.S. government in 1877. Two of the men carved into that mountain are slave owners, and one approved the mass hangings of 38 Dakota men in the largest mass execution in the history of the United States.

Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore, timed to America’s celebration of the Fourth of July, is almost a natural sequel to his rally in Tulsa — originally coinciding with Juneteenth. He is taking his campaign from the site of one of the United States’ most horrific acts of racism to another place with long histories of oppression and state-sanctioned violence…  [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NBC News>

I find myself less inclined than many to blame George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt for practices that are horrifical by today’s standards, but were considered normal and acceptable when they were alive.  They were all people who left things better than they found them.  They helped establish the foundation, on which we are fighting to win justice and freedom for all.

Native Americans in South Dakota Protest Trump’s July 4 Trip to Mount Rushmore

I do support the Lakota demand to destroy the monument on Mt. Rushmore.  I have nothing against having a monument to those four people and would not object to building one elsewhere.  The monument is in the wrong place.  The Lakota people gave up huge tracts of land, negotiating in good faith for the sanctity of the Black Hills, their sacred land.  The only just recompense for the crime of forcing them off their sacred land is to return it to them.  Republicans will argue that the monument is our heritage, but isn’t reinstituting the observance of this treaty after over a century of violation a far better heritage than four dead men carved in stone?

Julian Bear Runner: Trump Doesn’t Have Permission To Visit Mount Rushmore

And speaking of criminal Fuhrer Trump* (even though I’d rather not), he plans only a campaign event for racists, that he can use to start forest fires with an illegal fireworks display, and to kill as many Lakota people as he can, as his Sheeple spread the pestilence of Trump* virus, in the process of celebration Trump* and only Trump*.  Shame on the entire Republican Reich!

RESIST!!