Sturgis, South Dakota
What does this Mount Rushmore mean to us Indians? It means that these big white faces are telling us, ‹First we gave you Indians a treaty that you could keep these Black Hills forever, as long as the sun would shine, in exchange for all the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana. Then we found the gold and took this last piece of land, because we were stronger, and there were more of us than there were of you, and because we had cannons and Gatling guns, while you hadn’t even progressed far enough to make a steel knife. And you didn’t want to leave, we wiped you out, and those of you who survived we put on reservations. And then we took the gold out, a billion bucks, and we aren’t through yet. And because we like the tourist dollars, too, we have made your sacred Black Hills into one vast Disneyland.’
Lame Deer, J. F. (1994). Sitting on Top of Teddy Rosevelt’s Head. In Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions (p. 91). Simon & Schuster.