This Saturday, the 4th of July, Donald Trump made a “powerful” independence speech at Mount Rushmore. He commemorated this “magnificent, incredible, majestic mountain and monument to the greatest Americans who have ever lived.”
But why don’t we peel back those thick layers of blind nationalism and expose this insensitive, racially unaware extravaganza of presidential shambolism for what it really is.
Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, or “The Six Grandfathers” is a sacred Lakota Sioux site, which symbolises love, kindness and wisdom. Known to most as “Mount Rushmore”, it was named after a white New York lawyer who was reviewing gold claims in the area in 1885. 42 years later, in 1927, a historian named Doane Robinson proposed a monument commemorating Western heroes such as Oglala Lakota leader Red Cloud and explorers Lewis and Clark. However, the sculptor that was hired, Gutzon Borglum, was a known member of the Ku Klux Klan and decided that a tribute to four great presidents was a superior idea.
The choices of presidents themselves are questionable: Washington and Jefferson both owned slaves (at least 246 altogether), Lincoln ordered the execution of 38 Native Americans, which to this day is the largest government sanctioned mass execution in US history (that we know of). And finally, Roosevelt, expanded the US westwards, stealing more land from Native Americans.
The Rushmore monument was also set to feature an eight-foot plaque commemorating famous territorial purchases of the U.S . Nowadays, when the president commemorates this monument “the triumph of modern society and democracy”, the US feels proud and empowered. They don’t look at this mass of carved rock and think “this is a symbol of battle and vandalism, a sacred site blown up so that the faces of white slaveowners and executioners can be carved into it, once again bulldozing and erasing Native American history.”
The trophies of empire, colonialism and white domination pepper the globe. “Mount Everest” (REAL NAME: Sagarmatha or Chomolungma), “Eyre’s Rock” (REAL NAME: Uluru) a constant reminder of culture and heritage rewritten and forgotten by the white man. When Donald Trump calls Rushmore “…magnificent, incredible and majestic…” he calls the Native American culture and history weak, uninteresting and pathetic. But most of all, forgettable.
That is the domino effect of white domination – tell one person to forget, and they all will.
Isa Edwards Buesa
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