Trump's Mount Rushmore welcoming committee will include tribal protesters
Tribal leaders in South Dakota plan to protest President Trump’s appearance Friday at an elaborate Mount Rushmore fireworks display, arguing that the event could worsen the state’s coronavirus outbreak and violates Native Americans’ claims to the Black Hills.
The objections of seven Sioux tribal governments — all of which had raised concerns when Trump officials were planning the trip — underscore how the president has become a polarizing figure regardless of where he travels in the United States. Critics of the president demonstrated outside of his recent rallies in Tulsa and Phoenix, and they will greet him once he returns to Washington on Saturday for a “Salute to America” celebration he has orchestrated to commemorate Independence Day.
National Park Service officials have not allowed pyrotechnics to be ignited at Mount Rushmore for more than a decade, out of concern that they could set off wildfires and contaminate drinking water supplies. But Trump has pushed to resume fireworks at the memorial to four U.S. presidents, and this spring the Interior Department finalized an environmental assessment that concluded that they would not pose a significant risk to the land or its waterways.
But that same analysis indicated that half a dozen tribes that engaged in consultations with the department “expressed an overall objection to the event and its impacts.” Based on past pyrotechnic shows, the assessment concluded, resuming fireworks “would result in additional unexploded ordnance and debris on the landscape.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-s-mount-rushmore-welcoming-committee-will-include-tribal-protesters/ar-BB16gaG3?li=BBorjTa
= new reply since forum marked as read
Trump wants to be on Mt Rushmore.
