Mount Rushmore

Located in the heart of the Black Hills in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore is home to one of the United States of America's most notable and recognized monuments, but also a grave reminder of some of the darkest days of American history. This monument is carved into the face of a massive cliff known as Iron Mountain, standing on former indigenous lands that were taken by white men. It is said that you can see the monument from over a mile away, peering out from the trees. Engraved into this great mountain face are the massive carvings consisting of the likeness of (from left to right while facing) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Many controversies surround this American icon and many notable achievements are portrayed to celebrate the foundation and prosperity of our nation. This monument's construction was directed by Gutzon Borglum, a notable sculptor who has been linked to Ku Klux Klan groups and is said to be linked to Klan politics. This monument took around 14 years and hundreds of workers to complete. While this monument is beautiful and represents much of what America stands for, it is no stranger to controversy, racism, and slavery, and continues to be a hot topic in todays societal importance of racial and social justice.The first controversial issue relating to the Monuments depictions is that of George Washington, our nation's first president. George Washington was a slave owner for 56 years. When he died he had 317 slaves under his ownership, which is another major controversy for eliminating his face from the monument at Mount Rushmore. The next controversial figure of Mount Rushmore is Thomas Jefferson. Although he wrote the backbone for the Declaration of Independence, he has been the heaviest recipient of criticism and calls for demolition of the monument, especially in recent years. While Thomas Jefferson may have been a founding father and fighter for freedom, he also was a slave owner. People have come out wanting his portion of the monument torn down as well, as a bandaid over a bullet wound in our nation's history. This controversy has become more and more prevalent as we see the shift in American society towards the pursuit of American social justice and racial equality, which many equate the tearing down of his portion of the statue as a step, albeit a small one, towards justice for all people of America. The next figure carved into the side of the mountain is Theodore Roosevelt, notable American President as well as a notable conservationist and naturalist. The final face carved into the monument is legendary President Abraham Lincoln, who was also a champion of the abolition of slavery and the initiation of the Emancipation Proclamation, which helped urge our young nation towards one of which can take steps to repair it's roots in slavery and racism.

This brings up the most controversial issue, regarding the stolen lands of Natives. This is the largest controversy in regards to the monument Mount Rushmore. The land on which the monument stands is home to former sites and territories that belonged to the Sioux tribe of American Natives. This land was formerly called and known as the Six Grandfathers, named after the directions North, South, East. West, Above and Below. The site was used to honor the West and the expansion westward and the trailblazers and pioneers, with little sensitivity towards the sacred grounds’ former owners, and lands. This is one of many disputes between Native tribes and the monument. In 1868, the Sioux tribe was told by the United States government that they were going to seize the tribe's land, but only until they found gold in the mountain. This was ultimately an unkept promise, as soon after the land became home to prospectors and a massive migration of gold rushers, turning the area into a place of profit and opportunity for the white men moving westward at the expense of the native tribe that had roamed and controlled the land for decades prior, and again further pushing the Lakota Sioux tribe out of the land granted to them. Later on in the 1870’s, American President Ulysses S. Grant had made strides to make peaceful attempts at stealing indeginious people's lands, rather than a genocide of native people's. In the 1980’s, a supreme court ruling judged that there were not a worse set of actions taken against a specific group of people in American History.  

Sioux tribe leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse led many battles against the US Army in order to stop the theft of their sacred lands, with some success, but in the end the only result was a further investment into the war by the Army. This conflict lasted for many years, with little success for the native tribes, and around the 1890’s the last defeat of Native Tribes occurred and is named the Battle of Wounded Knee. The Battle of Wounded Knee is said to be misremembered in history books, because it is said that it was really a massacre of Sioux natives, and was a bloody attack on men, women, and children, which resulted in countless deaths and was mainly motivated by the willingness for white people to move west, and colonize the land and prospect for gold in the region that is home to the Mount Rushmore monument today. 

Another controversy which is much more recent occurred during our last President’s term, being Donald Trump. Donald Trump declared he should have a spot on the monument carved into the face of Mt. Rushmore alongside those of other American icons. Many people decidedly thought that it was insensitive for him to push himself into the limelight and request a spot on the mountain, in the midst of the George Floyd situation and protests. Another controversy discusses the use of the monument's grounds as a Trump rally, during the middle of the raging pandemic. Many people argue that the largely maskless crowd would cause spikes in Covid in the area. This comes as people close to the Trump Administration were diagnosed with Covid right after the speech. This enraged many people, as it came off as an irresponsible move to use the monument as a political prop, at the expense of the spread of Covid. Donald Trump's usage of the monument as a mascot for what many people consider racism and insensitivity have increased calls for the monuments destruction.

Mt. Rushmore is an iconic and popularly depicted American symbol of the American way of life and our pursuit of freedom and liberty, for many, but other major issues arise when looking at the development and the establishment of the domain. Many people think that the monument is a symbol of white colonization and the destruction of Native Lands, with little remorse.

• McKeever, Amy. “South Dakota's Mount Rushmore Has a Strange, Scandalous History.” Travel, National Geographic, 3 May 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/the-strange-and-controversial-history-of-mount-rushmore. 
• “Ten Facts about Washington & Slavery.” George Washington's Mount Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/ten-facts-about-washington-slavery/.  
• Hope, Native. “The Six Grandfathers before It Was Known as Mount Rushmore.” The Six Grandfathers Before It Was Known as Mount Rushmore, https://blog.nativehope.org/six-grandfathers-before-it-was-known-as-mount-rushmore.  
• Phelps, Jordyn, and Elizabeth Thomas. “Trump at Mount Rushmore: Controversy, Fireworks and Personal Fascination.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 4 July 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-mount-rushmore-controversy-fireworks-personal-fascination/story?id=71595321.  

• Public Broadcasting Service. (n.d.). Native Americans and Mount Rushmore. PBS. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rushmore-sioux/.   
• Share, M. (2016, October 1). The sordid history of Mount Rushmore. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/sordid-history-mount-rushmore-180960446/.  
• Guardian News and Media. (2021, July 3). The battle for mount rushmore: 'it should be turned into something like the Holocaust Museum'. The Guardian. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/03/mount-rushmore-south-dakota-indigenous-americans.