South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem spars with Ben & Jerry’s over Mount Rushmore. What to know

Miles J. Herszenhorn, USA TODAY
Updated ·2 min read
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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem slammed Ben & Jerry's over the ice cream company's July Fourth campaign calling for the return of Mount Rushmore to Indigenous populations.

Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's launched the campaign Tuesday and asserted "stolen Indigenous land" should be returned. The ice cream company singled out Mount Rushmore, writing it "was desecrated and dynamited to honor their colonizers, four white men − two of whom enslaved people and all of whom were hostile to Indigenous people and values."

Noem dismissed the campaign on Fox News Thursday and said she would not "listen to a bunch of liberal Vermont businessmen who think they know everything about this country and haven't studied our history."

Ben & Jerry's, however, specifically highlighted the history behind Mount Rushmore in a post on its website. The company wrote that Mount Rushmore was created on a holy mountain known to the Lakota Sioux as the Tunkasila Sakpe. The land surrounding the mountain is known as the Black Hills and is also considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem speaks at the Calvin Coolidge Foundation conference at the Library of Congress on February 17, 2023 in Washington, DC.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem speaks at the Calvin Coolidge Foundation conference at the Library of Congress on February 17, 2023 in Washington, DC.

On its website, the ice cream company also detailed how Indigenous tribes signed treaties with the U.S. government in the 19th century that allowed them to live on land that included the Black Hills as a "permanent home." But the government reneged on its agreement after gold was discovered on the land years later and displaced the the Great Sioux Nation once again.

Noem called Mount Rushmore − which features the sculptured faces of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln − the "the greatest symbol of our freedom and history of the United States of America."

"We can learn from the men on that mountain, we can do better, but boy, they led us through some challenging times," she said. "We should be proud of America and knock off what Ben & Jerry's is doing."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kristi Noem slams Ben & Jerry's for calling Mount Rushmore stolen land