There is a big difference between memorializing four of America's most famous presidents who are carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota and the hatred represented by clichéd sculptures to traitors erected after the Civil War across the South, with the explicit purpose of enshrining Jim Crow and perpetuating terrorism against black people ("Trump's Rushmore visit sparks outcry," front page, June 26).
Rather than fulminating about tearing down the Mount Rushmore memorial, we should all instead fully fund the completion of the Crazy Horse monument nearby. It is a powerful statement that all Native Americans should support.
Both can and should exist side by side.
Bruce Downing, St. Cloud, Minn.
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Having lived in Rapid City, S.D., for a few years, I've visited Mount Rushmore many times. The visitor center contains a complete history of its construction from start to finish. The important thing to note about Mount Rushmore is how the federal government funded most of it. Not far from Mount Rushmore is the Crazy Horse Memorial, another sculpture in granite — a sculpture of a great Native American leader who died to help protect his people against an invasion the federal government promised they would never allow ... but did. It's not finished and no federal funds have ever been spent to finish it.
In this time where we are questioning statues and monuments, we should also question why those monuments like the Crazy Horse Memorial sit unfinished. When the president visits Mount Rushmore to see white leaders, he should also visit the Crazy Horse Memorial to see a Native American leader, a leader who gave his last full measure to protect his people from injustice. Hopefully he'll learn about how the federal government broke a treaty (still upheld by the Supreme Court to this day), stole their land and enabled the mass murder of men, women and children that followed.
Norm Hickel, Prior Lake
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I find the article about the Lakota interesting, describing how their land was stolen from them.
Some of them state that Mount Rushmore is nothing more a depiction of the white men who stole their land, and therefore the monument should be taken down.
How far do you go back in trying to change history? The Lakota gained that land from other tribes. Do those tribes have the right to erase any symbolic features of the Lakota Nation? Who did those tribes defeat for their land? Do we go back hundreds of years, a thousand years? The history of man relates to acquiring land from someone else.