Deputies with the Pennington County Sheriff Office arrested about 15 people, many of them Native Americans, at the blockade site on U.S. Highway 16A on Friday evening, after an hours-long standoff with law enforcement and National Guard troops.
Those arrested were part of a protest against a visit to the memorial by President Donald Trump, as well as racial injustice and the theft of the Black Hills from Indigenous peoples who once called it home and still consider it a sacred place.
The NDN Collective, a Rapid City, S.D.-based advocacy organization, in a Saturday news release, identified two of those arrested as its president and CEO, Nick Tilsen, and Krystal Two Bulls, a founder of Voices of the Sacred. According to Pennington County records reviewed by Forum News Service, Tilsen remains in the county jail. He is charged with unlawful assembly, standing on a highway with the intent of impeding or stopping traffic, failure to vacate and robbery in the second degree. He is set to appear in court Monday morning. In its news release, The NDN Collective quoted Tilsen before he was escorted away from the protest site Friday in handcuffs.
“Mount Rushmore is on stolen Lakota land and its very existence is a symbol of white supremacy” says Nick Tilsen, NDN Collective President and CEO. “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– The Lakota have opposed Mount Rushmore since the very beginning.”
On the heels of growing national protests in defense of Black lives, monuments of white supremacy are coming down. Local, state and national governments are being called upon to take down symbols of thinly veiled white supremacy, including monuments and statues wherein white historical figures who have caused grave harm to Black and Indigenous lives are exalted, from confederate statues, to statues of Christopher Columbus and brutal conquistadors like Oñate.
“When it comes to U.S. Presidents, what many Americans don’t realize is that the vast majority of them had policies devoted either to the complete annihilation or subjugation of Indigenous people,” says Sarah Sunshine Manning, NDN Collective Director of Communications and host of the While Indigenous podcast. “Even seemingly ‘good’ presidents like Abraham Lincoln aren’t known for the harm they’ve caused Indigenous people; Though Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he also ordered the largest mass execution in American history with the hanging of 38 Dakota men in 1862-- these were Indigenous people who were fighting for their lives.”
Three of the activists are still in police custody after arrests last night in the Paha Sapa, and many face criminal charges after taking a stand yesterday in Lakota lands. Please support the Black Hills Bail and Legal Defense Fund. Outside the Pennington County Jail late Saturday morning, a group of supporters rallied to demand the release of Tilsen and the other jailed protesters. The NDN Collective was soliciting donations to the Black Hills Bail and Legal Defense Fund to defray the cost of bailing out those protesters who remained in jail.
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