The president of a South Dakota tribe called for Mount Rushmore to be removed, so long as the removal does not harm the existing environment.
Oglala Sioux President Julian Bear Runner told the Argus Leader Thursday that he believed the massive carving featuring Presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson should be removed from the area, which he considers to be part of the Sioux’s Great Sioux Reservation.
“I don’t believe it should be blown up, because it would cause more damage to the land,” said Bear Runner. “Removed but not blown up.”
President Trump is set to visit the monument over Independence Day weekend to view the fireworks display, which is returning for the first time in several years. Bear Runner said he was offended that Trump chose to visit the area without first requesting his tribe’s permission. He noted that the Sioux never officially ceded the land to the United States and said that any visit should include a government-to-government consultation between the Trump administration and tribal leadership.
“To me, it’s a great sign of disrespect,” he said.
State Rep. Shawn Bordeaux, a Democrat who is chairman of the State-Tribal Relations Committee, agreed with Bear Runner, saying, “I’m not really happy that he’s coming to pollute our Black Hills.”
In addition to disputes over the land on which the monument sits, South Dakota tribes have noted that sculptor Gutzon Borglum had ties to white supremacy and completed a carving honoring the Confederacy on Stone Mountain in Georgia. Mount Rushmore is one of several historical memorials targeted by protesters who have been calling for an end to police brutality and racial injustice since the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after being arrested by an officer who knelt on his neck in South Dakota’s neighboring state of Minnesota.
Nick Tilsen, a member of Oglala Lakota Nation and president of a local indigenous rights activist group NDN Collective, called Mount Rushmore a “symbol of white supremacy.”
“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today,” Tilsen said. “It’s an injustice to actively steal indigenous people’s land then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has vowed to protect the monument, which sits in a national park in the Black Hills region of her state.
