The battle for Mount Rushmore: ‘It should be turned into something like the Holocaust Museum’ https://t.co/TubdOwB12R
— The Guardian (@guardian) July 3, 2021
Annette McGivney, in the Guardian:
… Phil Two Eagle is not opposed to the fact that the giant sculpture of American presidents is a major tourist attraction but he thinks the park should have a different focus: oppression.
“It should be turned into something like the United States Holocaust Museum,” he said. “The world needs to know what was done to us.”
Two Eagle noted what historians have also documented. Hitler got some of his genocidal ideas for ethnic cleansing from 19th and early 20th century US policies against Native Americans.
Two Eagle is Sicangu Lakota and a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. He directs the tribe’s treaty council office which fights to claim sovereignty over lost homeland. He is part of a growing indigenous movement across the US and Canada that is demanding the return of Native American territory seized through broken treaties. And ground zero for the movement is Mount Rushmore.
Opposition is already proving staunch. Yet while Native Americans have been fighting to get their lands back for centuries, indigenous activists say real progress finally seems possible now that Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo, is secretary of the interior. As the first Native American to hold a US cabinet position, Haaland oversees 450m acres of federal land – all of it indigenous territory and much of it stolen through broken treaties.
“Having Haaland heading up the Department of Interior is a game changer,” said Krystal Two Bulls, who is Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne and director of NDN Collective’s Land Back campaign, an initiative demanding that governments honor their treaties with Indigenous people. “It opens the door for beginning the healing process. Returning our land is the first step toward reparations.”…
Lots of history here — well worth clicking the link!
Jerzy Russian
The first thing you see if you visit Plymouth Plantation (south of Boston) is a presentation about the native Wampanoag people and how they were taken as slaves, given diseases, etc. They could do a similar thing at Mount Rushmore.
HalfAssedHomesteader
Sadly, if history is any guide, we will cede the land back to Native Americans 15 minutes before climate change renders the land uninhabitable.
Kattails
@HalfAssedHomesteader: you know, I was busy today and came in late, got sidetracked by the music thread. And then down the Youtube rabbit hole, where I ran across this–Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt on the Late Show singing Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush”. Dropped back in here to recommend it, and dang. “look at Mother Nature on the run..” Exquisite harmonies of course, but the show ran 3/24/1999. Now we have a Canadian town wiped out and the Gulf of Mexico on fire.
(top this up with Bette Midler singing “Wind beneath my wings” to the first responders after 9/11 if your tear ducts need a good cleaning out.)
Winston
Watched the “Summer of Soul” on Hulu tonight. Great flick. Got to see a live performance by Nina Simone (who I never heard of), then watched “Nina” another great flick about her. Even though I thought I was a “woke” hippy back in the sixties and beyond it is amazing to me how much I missed
ETA: or what was suppressed by TPTB.
Kattails
Flipping to the Guardian article, and here we have Custer leading an expedition into the Black Hills, without permission, and finding gold. And then “the Federal government allowed gold prospectors and settlers to overrun the Black Hills and surrounding areas”.
Amir Khalid
@Kattails:
You need to get yourself both the albums they recorded as a vocal group: Trio and Trio II. There’s a lot of wonderful singing in store for you. That gorgeous and haunting cover of After The Gold Rush is from Trio II.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m having dinner this weekend with a former colleague who is First Nations (Ojibwe, from Manitoba) and his wife. His father was a survivor of the residential school systems, and the few stories I’ve heard from him are blood-curdling. I expect a lot of our conversation Saturday will be about the way Canada and the USA have treated their indigenous people from Day One.
NotMax
@Winston
Suppressed?
Nina Simone performed on Ed Sullivan’s show, fer corn’s sake.
Kattails
@Amir Khalid: Thanks, I will! I’m usually more classical, but coming of age music was the 60’s. So the earlier music thread had me back to “Volunteers” but I had to find the Woodstock version. “For What it’s Worth”, “After the Gold Rush”, these were original albums for me. Apparently Ronstadt and Young are very old and dear friends. I listened to that 6 times tonight and it’s still playing…haunting, as you said. Funny though, I’m hearing it overdubbed with Neil Young. Somehow.
Winston
@SiubhanDuinne: When I found out that my great great grandmother was full blood Cherokee, I was 43 years old. I bought the entire 15 volumes of the Handbook of the North American Indians
After reading the entire handbook I donated it to my local library. It’s an extraordinary tale of history including Custer’s foray into the black hills as well as everything else the right wing doesn’t want you to know.
Winston
@NotMax: Yet the footage of the the “summer of soul” was suppressed for over 50 years. And I only watched Ed Sullivan when the Beatles were going to be on LOL
SiubhanDuinne
@Winston:
I am way more ignorant than I should be about North American Indians, but significantly more knowledgeable than my public school history textbooks ever told me.
If you haven’t already and ever have the chance, do visit the Smithsonians Museum of the American Indian. It covers indigenous peoples from the Arctic to Patagonia. Well worth a day of your time in D.C.
RepubAnon
Remember how the Bundy Clan claimed that the federal government can’t own land? I don’t think giving it back to the original owners was what the Bundys had in mind…
NotMax
@Winston
Short interview with the director of the version being shown may be of some interest.
Trivia:
Sullivan was notorious for mangling the names of acts. Once, when introducing The Supremes, he spaced the name out entirely and announced “And now, here are … The Girls!”
Amir Khalid
Some depressing news: CNN reports 150 fatalities in 400 shooting incidents that took place over the holiday weekend.
Madeleine
Mr. Madeleine and I also watched Summer of Soul tonight. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s thrilling—so many wonderful musicians giving outstanding performances. The audience is swept up in it and the recent interviews really add to the experience. It’s emotionally intense and that’s partly due to the fact that it’s so distressing that it disappeared for so long. Though this is a good time for it to be found.
Winston
@NotMax: I was disappointed the Supremes weren’t there in Harlem. Maybe they weren’t political enough. But the groups that were, made great interactions with the crowd about MLK, JFK and RFK. Are you gonna fight? YEAH. Will you die? YEAH. That didn’t get out to the population at large. And maybe that’s a good thing or not. It may have led to more suppression of blacks or greater support of whites at the time in anti war protests.
James E Powell
@Winston:
Can’t say for sure, but it might be that 1969 was the year Motown was planning on launching Diana Ross’s solo career. The group was definitely seen as pop and among the more political or social acts, black & white, of the late 60s. Love Child is about as close as they get.
Ten Bears
Should be dynamited. Tactical nuke …
raven
@Winston: What “suppressed”? It was a series of concerts that lasted six weeks. The footage is interesting but it’s nothing compared to “Woodstock” in terms of concert footage. I thought the most revealing part was Marilyn McCoo explaining how the Fifth Dimension was considered a black group doing white music. Nina Simone was definitely the highlight, when I saw her in at the University of Illinois in 1970 she made all the white people move to the back.
Steeplejack (phone)
@raven:
LOL. Well said.