This quote from Nick Tilden, outspoken activist and businessman from the Oglala Lakota nation, might offer some helpful context:
"Mount Rushmore is on stolen Lakota land and its very existence is a symbol of white supremacy. In opposing the ongoing desecration of our sacred land and asking for return of Lakota lands where Mount Rushmore is situated, we’re not saying anything that our parents, grandparents and great grandparents haven’t already said.”
Yep, that's a great deal of human history. But "let's not act like it was all rainbows and butterflies" really papers over the fact that the sea-to-shining-sea genocide and bad-faith diplomacy that founded the modern nation-states of the Americas were on a different scale than most of those conquests in history.
And whatever, you can't change history, but: the Indigenous groups who the colonizing forces tried to exterminate still exist, and they're asking for greater sovereignty over the lands their ancestors held sacred, did a much better job of managing ecologically, and were violently cheated out of. There are ways we can move forward without simply throwing our hands up and saying, "Gee, yeah, that was a shame, ah well, alas."
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This quote from Nick Tilden, outspoken activist and businessman from the Oglala Lakota nation, might offer some helpful context:
"Mount Rushmore is on stolen Lakota land and its very existence is a symbol of white supremacy. In opposing the ongoing desecration of our sacred land and asking for return of Lakota lands where Mount Rushmore is situated, we’re not saying anything that our parents, grandparents and great grandparents haven’t already said.”
Full article here if you're interested.
Yep, that's a great deal of human history. But "let's not act like it was all rainbows and butterflies" really papers over the fact that the sea-to-shining-sea genocide and bad-faith diplomacy that founded the modern nation-states of the Americas were on a different scale than most of those conquests in history.
And whatever, you can't change history, but: the Indigenous groups who the colonizing forces tried to exterminate still exist, and they're asking for greater sovereignty over the lands their ancestors held sacred, did a much better job of managing ecologically, and were violently cheated out of. There are ways we can move forward without simply throwing our hands up and saying, "Gee, yeah, that was a shame, ah well, alas."
He inspired many, not least BiSB and his unforgettable Terp Kablooey. As timing would have it, the Terps of November are exactly six months away.
RIP to a legend.
Agreed, though it was not, in fact, homecoming.
Welp, your username almost checks out
Eight suspensions, seven points. What kind of rutger is that?
Extra points for the My Cousin Vinny still. Reminds me of a question the itinerant litigator once asked Mark Dantonio: "What is a #GRIT anyways?"
You can also vote as many times as you want in an incognito window, if you're into that sort of thing.