Native Sun News Today Editorial: Mount Rushmore fireworks and ignorant politicians

Friday, July 3, 2020  

Several months ago a few students from Oglala Lakota College, Rapid City Campus, were discussing the statues of the presidents lining the streets of Rapid.

Native Sun News Today editorial suggested they form an investigative group of students, get the names of all the statues, and then do some deep research on every one of them. What was their attitude and treatment of Native Americans? African Americans? Hispanics? Etc. etc.

After you have completed your research put all of your new knowledge into an essay. We are sure that nearly every President standing on every street corner in the City has done some terrible things to Native Americans and others. Thinks of all the laws that were passed at the end of the 1800s stripping millions of acres of land from the Indigenous people, including the Black Hills.

We think this would be a worth project for any college class in America, but we believe the students at OLC are much better equipped to view it through the eyes of the oppressed. We ask the students at OLC to seriously consider this as a class project and we will gladly print the results of their study.

Most Natives do not celebrate the 4th of July. It was not a day of “independence” to us, but a day when America claimed everything that was ours.

Donald Trump and his suck-up daughter Kristi Noem will use the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore to publicize their political ambitions. When it was suggested to Noem that there may be protests by Natives during Trump’s visit she haughtily replied, “Not on my watch.”

Keep in mind this is the same Governor who authorized a study of the hydroxychloroquine medicine by subjecting 2,000 of her constituents to testing of the drug because Daddy Trump said he was taking the drug and it works against Covid-19 virus. The Food and Drug Administration just released its own study saying not only does it NOT work, it can cause serious health problems.

What is even more startling about this blatant act of political support to Trump by Noem was the fact that a respected medical organization, Sanford Health, allowed itself to lead this farce. How much were they paid to sell their souls to the 2 devils?

But the most blatant act of ignorance occurred when Noem sought the help of Trump and this State’s Republican Senators in an effort to remove checkpoints on the Indian reservations set up by tribes trying to stop and prevent the spread of a deadly pandemic. It is obvious that she and her cohorts had absolutely no knowledge of tribal history and how pandemics of TB, small pox, and other diseases had decimated the Indian nations over the years.

And it is obvious that not one of them has ever read the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.

Contact the Editorial Board of Native Sun News Today at editor@nativesunnews.today

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