The Shadow of Tourism: Featuring the Ugliest Monument in America

                           

Gazing onto the pristine mountainside, one feels at peace. The serenity of nature swarms over your body entering into your spirit. The worries of yesterday vanish as the wind sings in sync with the chirping birds and calming river. Your are centered. While on vacation, you decide to go to a landmark that acts as a representation for the entire country: Mount Rushmore. When you finally arrive, you gaze up at the faces of our American forefathers. They are frozen in time. Their expressions look out onto the countryside as if they are protecting our mighty country. The stoic faces are carved with such precision that one could envision them in the flesh. All around you are mingling tourists. Many of which are overwhelmed with patriotism as they snap photo after photo.They envision the founding of the country, the different contributions these presidents contributed to our system, and the overall beauty in this setting. However, this reality is not shared by all who see it. 

Mount Rushmore is a National Park that attracts over two million people annually. Historians, patriotic Americans, film producers, etc flock to this site. Mount Rushmore is a site associated with gold, founding fathers, patriotism, sacred land, and stolen land. However, the average American sees Mount Rushmore as a symbol for our "great country". This interpretation is viciously false for the native american. 

The Lakota and several other tribes regard The Black Hills as sacred lands. Their ancestors held their sacred Sun Dances in those hills. These dances symbolized community as each tribe met up, sacrifices for the great Spirit, and overall spirituality. Initially there was a treaty exclaiming that the U.S. could never take those lands. However, once gold was found there, the policy changed. These sacred lands were exploited for profit and then the native's church was carved into. 

As Americans, we may regard George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt as American heroes, as the epitome of what an American president should resemble. But these figures represent violence and theft to the natives. 

George Washington was nicknamed the "Town Taker"/"Burner of Towns" during the French Indian War. His nickname was given by the chief of the  Iroquois Native Americans. Thomas Jefferson seeked to create an official "Indian Removal Plan". Andrew Jackson is accredited with the fulfillment of this plan, but it was Jefferson's tactic. "Jackson was merely legalizing and implementing a plan laid out by Jefferson in a series of private letters that began in 1803, although Jefferson did not implement the plan during his own presidency" (Wikipedia). Abraham Lincoln is also associated with violence. His violences were in the form of discriminatory laws such as placing natives on reservations. Several massacres also occurred while Lincoln was president such as the Dakota War where 38 Indian men were hanged. In fact, this was the largest hanging in US history, and it was the day after Christmas (Lincoln: No Hero to Native Americans by Sherry Salway). Lastly, there's Teddy Roosevelt.  Although he spoke highly for Indians' cause, he stole their land. He created state parks which made it to where natives could no longer worship in "their church", rather they had to pay and act like a "tourist". He believed in Manifest Destiny and when asked about the taking of the natives' lands he claimed, "(it)...was ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable" (Lakota Student Alliance). For these reasons are celebrated forefathers are not celebrated by all. They signify something greater than Americans gaining certain privileges and rights. They also symbolize death, discrimination, violence, and the destruction of the native sanctuary. 

Treaty of Laramie in 1868 established the Black Hills as belonging to the Sioux Indians to where nobody could encroach upon their lands. However, 1874 marks the year the the Black Hills Gold Rush began. In the discovery of gold, Americans abandoned the treaty. The tribe chiefs never agreed to any of the deals Americans attempted to make in order to righteously "purchase" the land. Violences occurred between Indians and miners until the natives were sent to a reservation. 

The issue of The Black Hills has been resurrected again and again. The issue persists to this day by persistent Lakota Indians. The lands are sacred to them, so putting price tag on the hills was never an option. 

"The issue was revived in 2009, when President Barack Obama stated his support for the tribes decision not to take the settlement money for the Black Hills. In September of 2012, the United Nations, after meeting with several tribes in the U.S., recommended that the United States return lands to some Native Americans, including the Black Hills to the Sioux.  The dispute is still unresolved as of this update. (South Dakota Legends  The Black Hills). 

When one looks at the quarter of Mount Rushmore or even the "famous heads", one will not envision the native disputes that have persisted since before the heads were carved. We don't picture the violence, the feeling of the loss of history/ancestral lands, or what we gained by our forefathers acting so violently in order to gain and profit. It is sites like these where unknowing American hands are stained with blood while they continually smile, take pictures, and recall a false history: a distorted history.