How Mount Rushmore began

Carved into the granite heart of the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore is one of America’s most recognizable, and most controversial, monuments. Beneath the towering faces of four presidents lies a dark and often untold history of stolen land, massacres, and the erasure of Indigenous people who have called this place sacred for generations. From sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s troubling past to the Lakota’s ongoing fight for recognition through the nearby Crazy Horse Memorial, this episode explores how a monument meant to celebrate a nation has become a lasting reminder of the violence and displacement that built it.

Learn more about the Save Our Signs Project

Sources:

https://history.nebraska.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/doc_publications_NH1998EndSiouxWar.pdf

Great Sioux War

Why These Four Presidents? - Mount Rushmore National Memorial (U.S. National Park Service)

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