this person who was once a local tyrant, gleefully spitting in the face of Indigenous peoples in what she perceived as her backyard, now runs one of the most monstrous and wide-reaching organizations on earth
💬 1 🔁 4202 ❤️ 3319 · It’s worse than it looks at first glance.
About the news of the “No Indians” policy at a Rapid City hotel and the su
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 notice served in response by local Native people: [...] (1) the relevancy of the situation to the ongoing back-and-forth between the South Dakota governor and Native peoples over the past few years; or (2) how insulting an anti-Native policy is in Rapid City specifically, given how much it profits off of white tourism and histories of Native dispossession.
This is the place where the revered Native landmark of Six Grandfathers was destroyed to create Mount Rushmore, a monument to the dominion of the US, and only-barely-informally also a monument to US “victory” over Indigenous peoples.
So, the owner of a hotel in Rapid City, in March 2022, posted on social media, saying that they would ban Natives from the property. In response, the leaders of five communities/reservations signed a 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 [...] Oglala Lakota, Rosebud Sioux, Standing Rock Sioux, Crow Creek, and Cheyenne River communities/reservations. [...]
How closely tied is Rapid City to a legacy of Indigneous dispossession?
In early 2019, residents at Pine Ridge were trapped by catastrophic 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. Indigenous people characterized this as an overt “criminalization of protest,” especially advocacy against the installation of the Keystone XL pipeline and other fossil fuel projects in the region. (Keystone XL would pass by/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 anti-protesting legislation, while Native people demonstrated against it at the capitol building in Pierre.
(Notably, these anti-protesting regulations--criminalizing Indigenous dissidents--were being established just before similar discourses of protest-criminilization would become widespread in the following months during the onset of the pandemic era and George Floyd rebellion.)
How much money has Rapid City earned for white US entrepreneurs?
Rapid City is the city primarily servicing travel, tourism, recreation, 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; Wind Cave National Park; Theodore Roosevelt National Park; and Badlands National Park.
The National Parks Service estimates that Mount Rushmore National Memorial contributes over $300 million to “the local economy,” with much of that wealth being channeled through “lodging.” Hotels, in other words.
Similarly, it’s estimated that Badlands National Park “generates” $100 million or more to that same Beloved Economy.
The Sturgis bike rally is held about 25 miles away from Rapid City. In 2015, there were 750,000 visitors in attendance. Each year, the rally directly earns between $1.5 and $2.5 million in tax revenue from temporary vendors alone. But that 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. Imagine all the side-trips to Devil’s Tower and Wind Cave.
That’s an awful lot of tourist money.
Pine Ridge reservation is right next-door to Rapid City.
All those millions and millions dollars in revenue that the national parks, memorials, bike rally, and other sites bring to Rapid City every year? Not shared with Native communities.
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 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 Northern Plains peoples really “over”?
The frowning faces of four US presidents sit chiseled in stone atop Six Grandfathers, glaring down upon the Black Hills and peoples of the Northern Plains.
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