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Native Americans Protesting Trump Trip to Mount Rushmore

Associated Press

   SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA - President Donald Trump's plans to kick off
   Independence Day with a showy display at Mount Rushmore have angered
   Native Americans, who view the monument as a desecration of land
   violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to
   Indigenous people.

   Several groups led by Native American activists are planning protests
   for Trump's July 3 visit, part of Trump's "comeback" campaign for a
   nation reeling from sickness, unemployment and, recently, social
   unrest. The event is slated to include fighter jets thundering over the
   79-year-old stone monument in South Dakota's Black Hills and the first
   fireworks display at the site since 2009.

   But it comes amid a national reckoning over racism and a
   reconsideration of the symbolism of monuments around the globe. Many
   Native American activists say the Rushmore memorial is as reprehensible
   as the many Confederate monuments being toppled around the nation.

   "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
   colonizers who committed genocide."

   While some activists, like Tilsen, want to see the monument removed and
   the Black Hills returned to the Lakota, others have called for a share
   in the economic benefits from the region.

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