I just watched the protest that the Lakota Native American tribe held against Trump and Pence (I can’t believe I just thought of TP as a pejorative) before Trump’s speech at Mt. Rushmore. Notes:
First, the history (Wikipedia) that I was-not-but-now-am familiar with. The Black Hills where Mt. Rushmore was sculpted had been occupied by Lakota Sioux and then promised to them by the United States government in 1868. Then gold was discovered on the land. Then Wounded Knee happened. Native Americans were slaughtered and the land was eminent domained (without compensation). Well, at least without compensation until the 1980 Supreme Court decision said that they were not compensated. They declined the monetary compensation (now at $1 billion (yes that amount is correct)) and instead fought for return of the land. It has not, as you can well assume, happened.
So I watched Unicorn Riot’s (donate here!) live stream of the protest throughout. There were ominous overtures that–as we now know after the fact–led to nothing as catastrophic as the events prior in DC that included armed forces attacking civilians in front of the White House in order for Trump to have a holding-the-bible photo op. (Mantra: there is no bottom).
At the lead of the protest was Nick Tilsen of the NDN Collective. I was not sure of his role, but it appeared to be basically as a community leader. However he’s actually a well-studied activist (community leaders can be well-studied, no offense) who’s the president of the NDN Collective. Their goal is worth repeating in whole:
We must continue to defend our people, communities, and nations against negative resource extraction that poisons our people, pollutes our water, destroys our land, contributes to climate change and violates our human rights. Doing this through organizing our communities, making our voice heard, and utilizing a wide variety of tactics is imperative in shifting the political and financial systems that are impacting our communities.
from NDN Collective > Our Mission
Twitter witness was Erin Bormett whose reporting (key moment here, unfortunately no single threaded tweet) alerted me of the event. Who follows her that I follow? Who knows because it’s the magic of the Internet that doesn’t matter how I get alerted and instead the fact that I do get alerted of these events. This particular event was also being reported on by the alt-leftist (?) news outlet Unicorn Riot (I follow them and you-should-too). Me -> who? -> Erin Bormett -> Unicorn Riot -> me.
I watched live in my office, then pulled myself away to finally get the day’s shower (yes, it was 7 PM). Nick tried to negotiate a less destructive outcome, then asked for 30 min to get the young, women, elderly, and sick out of the path of the inevitable. The local police sympathized in their own way, but were subject to the will of the county police (“You’re all beholden to the white man” says Nick (he ain’t wrong)), who were subject to the will of the state, federal, etc. (To be answered: how is my position supporting the Native Americans different than that of whoever those isolationist ranchers were a few years ago?). There were confrontations and, except for a Trump supporter who hit a female protester, mild. The Dakota came prepared with gloves, masks, protective gear, that were thankfully not needed. Surprising, based on the leak of a speech that was described as “American Carnage 2”. Who knows how many invisible hands were working to temper Trump’s and Stephen Miller’s impulses to crush their enemies like in DC.
The beautiful end: Trump’s speech (as I heard from the commentary) was worse than incoherent and flaccid. He is dead.