It’s worse than it looks at first glance. About the news of the “No Indians” policy at a Rapid City hotel and the subsequent eviction notice served by local Lakota people: I don’t think that local/national media outlets have been direct enough in pointing out just how insulting an anti-Native policy is in Rapid City specifically, given how much it profits off of white tourism and a history of Native dispossession.
This is the place where the revered Native landmark of Six Grandfathers was destroyed to create Mount Rushmore, officially a monument to the dominion and power of the US, and unofficially a monument to US “victory” over Indigenous people.
So, the owner of a hotel in Rapid City, in March 2022, posted on social media, saying that she would ban Natives from her property. In response, local Native people have rallied, marched, and posted an “eviction notice” banner on signage at her hotel. Technically, the leaders of five Native communities/reservations signed a formal Notice of Trespass, issued to the hotel owner, indicating that the owner violated the terms of the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty. This Notice of Trespass was signed by leaders of Oglala Lakota, Rosebud Sioux, Standing Rock Sioux, Crow Creek, and Cheyenne River communities/reservations.
Rapid City is functionally/de facto the only sizable, significant US urban area in a vast area across the northern Great Plains. Along with, like, maybe Billings, it is one of the only “major” metro areas in the hundreds and hundreds of miles between Minneapolis to the east and Denver to the west, or between Omaha/Kansas City to the east and Boise, Spokane, and Salt Lake City to the west.
How much money has Rapid City earned for white US settlers and entrepreneurs?
Rapid City is the city primarily servicing travel, tourism, business, etc., for these famous sites: “Mount Rushmore”, Devil’s Tower, historic Deadwood, the Sturgis bike rally, the Black Hills and Black Hills National Forest, Oglala National Grassland, Thunder Basin National Grassland, Nebraska National Forest, Wind Cave National Park, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and Badlands National Park. Rapid City is one of the only “major” cities functioning as a stopover for highway travelers between the Midwest and Billings, Yellowstone National Park, and the Rockies.
The Sturgis bike rally is held about 25 miles away from Rapid City. In 2021, attendance at the rally was estimated at 550,000 visitors. In 2015, there were 750,000 visitors. Each year, the rally directly earns between $1.5 and $2.5 million in tax revenue from temporary vendors alone. But that’s a fraction. This revenue doesn’t include the vast sums of money spent on camping, hotels, restaurants, and attendees’ likely additional visits to the area’s national parks/forests.
And that’s just the bike rally. Imagine the visitors that sites like Badlands National Park and Black Hills National Forest attract.
That’s an awful lot of tourist money.
How closely tied is Rapid City to a legacy of Indigneous dispossession?
In early 2019, residents at Pine Ridge were trapped by incredible springtime flooding; access to healthcare and grocery stores was interrupted or impossible. Immediately afterward, in 2019, the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, strongly and repeatedly advocated for the passing of statewide anti-protesting legislation meant to target Native organizers and criminalize protest against the installation of the Keystone XL pipeline and other fossil fuel projects in the region. (Keystone XL would pass through both Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux areas.)
In 2019, Oglala Lakota leadership voted unanimously to ban Governor Noem from Pine Ridge Reservation over the issue.
Even though the state did pass the anti-protesting legislation, a judge struck it down in October 2019. In December 2019, the South Dakota Water Management Board continued to discuss/allow issuing water access permits to the Keystone pipeline developers. In January 2020, several Lakota communities refused to attend or participate in South Dakota’s formal “State of the Tribes” event hosted by the governor, and instead held their own “Great Sioux Nation Address”. In February 2020, the South Dakota state legislature ended up passing a newer version of the draconian anti-protesting legislation.
Pine Ridge reservation is right next-door to Rapid City.
Pine Ridge is the site of Shannon County, occasionally cited as “the poorest or second poorest county in the US.” Nearby Oglala Lakota County is also cited as one of the poorest counties in the US. For many years in the 1990s/2000s, the US county with the lowest median household income was Buffalo County, also in South Dakota and home to the Crow Creek Reservation.
The Wounded Knee Massacre, often cited in settler-colonial textbooks as the event which ended the so-called Indian Wars and ushered in “the closing of the frontier”, took place on 29 December 1890 on land now within Pine Ridge.
Is the US assault against the Lakota really over?
The frowning faces of four US presidents sit chiseled in stone atop Six Grandfathers, glaring down upon the Black Hills.
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