Matt Sledge Trump’s plan for a national statue garden could get built on sacred Native land currently held by a wealthy South Dakota mining family. excerpts: A provision buried deep in the House budget bill allocates $40 million toward President Donald Trump’s plan for a vast garden of larger-than-life statues — and it could get built on sacred Native land. The House version of the budget reconciliation bill passed last month contains funding for Trump’s proposed National Garden of American Heroes, which would lionize figures ranging from Andrew Jackson to Harriet Tubman. While the garden does not have an official location yet, one candidate is minutes from Mount Rushmore National Memorial, the iconic carvings of presidential faces in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Trump first announced his plan for a national statue garden during a July 4, 2020, address at Mount Rushmore in response to the racial justice protesters toppling Confederate statues. The potential statue garden site near Mount Rushmore belongs to an influential South Dakotan mining family that has offered to donate the land, an offer that has support from the state’s governor. The Black Hills, however, are sacred land to the region’s Indigenous peoples, and its ownership following a U.S. treaty violation is contested. One Native activist decried the idea of building another monument in the mountain range. “I’m quite sure,” said Taylor Gunhammer, an organizer with the NDN Collective and citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation, “that Harriet Tubman would not be pleased that people trying to build the statue of her on stolen Lakota land have apparently learned nothing from her.” From Columbus to TrebekTrump’s vision has had a rocky road to realization. Trump’s announcement was meant to offer his own competing vision to the activists who sought to remove statues — by force or by politics — of figures like Andrew Jackson or Confederate generals. In one of the final acts of his first term, he issued a list of potential figures that alternately baffled, delighted or outraged observers. They included divisive — but inarguably historic — figures such as Jackson, who signed the Indian Removal Act that began the Trail of Tears. Also listed, however, were unexpected choices such as Canadian-born “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek, who was naturalized in 1998. Some of the names never got American citizenship at all — including Christopher Columbus. Joe Biden canceled the idea after taking the presidency, but Trump quickly revived it after his second inauguration. The National Endowment for the Humanities was placed in charge of commissioning artists, who are required to craft “classical” statues in marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass and barred from abstract or modernist styles.
The statue-making process has drawn its own skeptics about whether Trump can fulfill a vision of having the garden ready by July 4, 2026, the nation’s 250th birthday. The process of selecting a site and building Trump’s vision of a “vast outdoor park” in time could be just as daunting, however. The Interior Department declined to comment on the site selection process, with a spokesperson saying that the garden was still in the “planning and discussion phase.” “We are judiciously implementing the President’s Executive Order and will provide additional information as it becomes available,” spokesperson J. Elizabeth Peace said. One of the few publicly known site candidates emerged in March, when Republican South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden issued a press release flagging the Black Hills as a potential location. In his announcement, he noted that the Lien family of Rapid City, South Dakota, had already offered land it owns near Mount Rushmore. The Lien family, which has major interests in South Dakota mining projects, is also developing a theme park resort in Rapid City and a lodge nearby in the Black Hills. The family owns dozens of acres near the historic Doane Robinson tunnel, which offers motorists a framed view of Mount Rushmore. Sacred and ProfaneThe vision of another monument in the Black Hills, however, would place South Dakota politicians on a collision course with some Native tribal members who have long lamented the creation of Mount Rushmore. The Lakota Sioux called the mountain the Six Grandfathers and ventured to it for prayer and devotion, according to National Geographic. The entire Black Hills were sacred ground for the Lakota and other tribes. The Black Hills were promised to the Oceti Sakowin peoples as part of a Great Sioux Reservation in an 1868 treaty, but the U.S. government broke its promise when gold was discovered there.
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