Mount Rushmore's future

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm assuming this is because of the Gorsuch decision?  The Black Hills are ours.  We took them from the Sioux by conquest in the Great Sioux War and the Sioux have no legal right to them.

The Great Sioux War is one of the most morally dubious actions in U.S. history.  While most Native American stories are far more complex and morally gray than the "U.S. bad, natives good" version of history that gets taught today, this one really is pretty black-and-white.  We gave the Sioux the hills, told them they could stay there, then discovered gold and said "just kidding, give them back or we'll kill you."  In the federal government's defense, we put a lot of effort into diplomacy before resorting to violence, and policed the area pre-war to kick out miners on the Sioux's behalf.  But the Hills belonged to the Sioux, as did the gold, and that should have been that.

If we want to do right by history, we could give them back, but it's kind of pointless now.  The Black Hills of 2020 aren't what they were in 1876.  The Sioux today would never be able to reclaim the lifestyle they lived in 1876.  In fact even in 1876 their pre-expansion lifestyle had nearly ceased to exist as the buffalo herds, on which they depended for sustenance, were rapidly thinning.  Returning the Black Hills would just be an expensive and painful token gesture.

The better solution, if you want to go there, is some kind of official apology for the Great Sioux War, compensation for the stolen land, and maybe some compensatory land somewhere else.  Or give them back the rest of the Black Hills, since Mt. Rushmore is only a small part on the far east end and can easily be carved out.

That said, the federal government taking this action would create a very slippery slope.  A lot of American territory has come from wars of conquest against weak foes, wars that are easy to caricature as "greedy America vs. poor weak little guy" even though the contexts for those wars can be exceedingly complex and morally ambiguous.  If we're going to apologize for the Great Sioux War and compensate the Sioux, why shouldn't we apologize for the Mexican-American War and compensate Mexico?  It's a case that requires more thought and historical knowledge than the average American is capable of.  This kind of reasoning is exactly why America and so many other nations refuse to apologize for obvious historical sins -- once you apologize for the obvious ones, where do you draw the line before everyone who was ever shafted at some point in history starts demanding an apology?