United States (US) President Donald Trump denounced ‘cancel culture’ and the toppling of historically controversial monuments in a Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore, the setting of mammoth sculpted portraits of former US presidents.
He vowed that the South Dakota landmark would ‘stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom’.
‘This monument will never be desecrated, these heroes will never be defaced,’ Trump promised what the BBC described as a cheering crowd.
Trump said he would make sure the monument would be protected from what he called a ‘left-wing cultural revolution’. He called recent demonstrations about race ‘a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children’.
The BBC reported that Mount Rushmore was controversial for two reasons: two of the carved faces of the four former presidents are of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom were slave-owners, and the site itself is on land taken from the indigenous Lakota Sioux by the US government in the 1800s.
The sculptures were carved between 1927 and 1941.
The report said Native American groups had criticised Trump’s visit for posing a health risk – masks and social distancing were not mandatory at the Mount Rushmore event, despite warnings by health officials – and for celebrating US independence in an area that is sacred to them.
Many Native Americans did not celebrate Independence Day because they associated it with the colonisation of their tribal homelands and the loss of their cultural freedoms.
Ahead of the event, a group of mostly Native American protesters blocked a main road to the monument with white vans, leading to a tense stand-off with police. They were eventually cleared from the road by police officers and National Guard soldiers, who used smoke bombs and pepper spray, according to local reports.