We're overjoyed to read this press release, Breaking: charges against Nick Tilsen and Land Defenders dropped, NDN Collective celebrates a victory for the movement:
VICTORY! After months of organizing, charges against Nick Tilsen, NDN Collective President and CEO, and all other Land Defenders arrested on July 3 in the Black Hills will be dropped.
Rapid City, SD — Today, NDN Collective announced that the charges against Nick Tilsen, NDN Collective President and CEO, and all other Land Defenders arrested on July 3 in the Black Hills will be dropped. This announcement comes after months of political pressure from grassroots groups, including petitions, social media campaigns, and local and national media coverage of the cases.
In the lead-up to former President Donald Trump’s visit to the Black Hills last summer, over 200 Indigenous people and allies, including Tilsen, were met with force from the state police. Though Trump and his group were violating multiple treaties with their presence, including one through the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Land Defenders faced multiple charges. In the end, 21 Land Defenders were arrested and charged with misdemeanors, and Tilsen, charged with a combination of misdemeanors and felonies, ultimately facing up to 17 years in prison.
“This victory and the dropped charges are a direct result of the Movement showing up and standing up for all the Land Defenders who took a stand in the Hesapa (Black Hills) on July 3. Tens of thousands organized, called, donated to our legal and bail fund and signed the petitions to drop these charges, and we acknowledge their invaluable support,” said Nick Tilsen, NDN Collective President and CEO.
“The fact that the State is dropping these charges reveals that these were politically and racially motivated charges to begin with, exposing both the Sheriff and State prosecutor’s ill intent to abuse their positions of power to suppress our movement and overcriminalize Indigenous people,” said Tilsen. “How do I go from facing nearly 17 years in jail, to all charges being dropped? We organized, we fought, and we backed them into a corner where there was no longer any political upside for them to continue this unjust prosecution of myself and the other Land Defenders.”
“The charges being dropped represent the start of a shift in power that is not only powerful in this moment, but necessary for the future of our movements. I feel a sense of relief that organizing won today and myself, Nick and all the Land Defenders won’t have to carry the emotional burden of these charges moving forward,” said Krystal Two Bulls, director of the LANDBACK Campaign at NDN Collective. “I have so much gratitude for the thousands of supporters who prayed, donated, called, emailed, signed petitions and reached out over the past nine months. This is a wake up call for our communities. We will no longer accept racially motivated attacks on our Land or bodies, without organizing in response! We will continue to organize forward and fight for all our targeted and incarcerated Relatives!”
“This is a day of victory for our Movement and our People, and we will utilize it to catalyze our cause forward.” said Tilsen. “Thank you to everybody that prayed, called, wrote and supported is in this struggle. As we celebrate this day we recognize the Black, Indigenous and people of color and LGBTQ community wrongly imprisoned and incarcerated still in jails across this nation. We are not free until we are all free. This is what I will continue to dedicate my life and work to is the true liberation of my people and our lands.”
Land Defenders Nick Tilsen, Krystal Two Bulls, and Nataani Means will be discussing this breaking news in a conversation on NDN Collective’s livestream show “NDN Live” on Tuesday, March 23, at 6 pm MST. The show will stream on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and will be hosted by NDN Collective Director of Communications Sarah Sunshine Manning.
Reporting for the Associated Press, Stephen Groves writes in Lakota Mount Rushmore protester says charges being dropped:
A Lakota activist who was arrested while leading a protest before former president Donald Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore last year said he has negotiated with prosecutors to drop charges against him, which carried a punishment of nearly 17 years in prison.
Nick Tilsen, the president of an Indigenous advocacy organization called NDN Collective, told The Associated Press that he will participate in a prison diversion program in exchange for all but one charge against him being dropped. He cast the deal as a victory for Indigenous organizers who have been calling for public lands that once belonged to tribes to be returned to tribal control.
It’s a victory for the movement,” Tilsen said. “Any time you try to prosecute organizers and leaders of this movement it’s a strategy to try to weaken the movement.”
The final charge, simple assault of a law enforcement officer, will be dropped once he completes the program, he said, adding that charges against other protesters will also be dropped as well.
The Pennington County State’s Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the charges were dropped.
Tilsen had helped organize the demonstration near Mount Rushmore on July 3 to call for the Black Hills, which were seized from the Lakota despite treaties with the United States, to be returned to Indigenous control. For the Lakota people, the area is sacred and known as Paha Sapa — “the heart of everything that is.”
Law enforcement officers, including the South Dakota National Guard, confronted the protesters after they used vans to form a blockade on a road leading to Mount Rushmore. As law enforcement officers advanced on the blockade, protesters scuffled with the officers and Tilsen took a shield from one officer, the Rapid City Journal reported.
Tilsen was not charged with physically assaulting officers, but instead using “physical menace or credible threat” to put them “in fear of imminent bodily harm,” according to the Rapid City Journal.
But Tilsen said the move by prosecutors to dismiss most charges showed the effectiveness of a campaign organized by NDN Collective. They had gathered over 20,000 signatures from an online petition and sent hundreds of letters and phone calls to the prosecutor’s office, according to Tilsen.
It’s great that we’re having a social and racial reckoning in this country,” Tilsen said. “For Indigenous people and for the Lakota, it’s really about land because you take Mount Rushmore — well, Mount Rushmore is built on stolen land, carved by a member of the KKK.”
The monument was conceived in the 1920s as a tourist draw for the new fad in vacationing called the road trip. South Dakota historian Doane Robinson recruited sculptor Gutzon Borglum to abandon his work creating the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Georgia, which was to feature Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson.
Borglum was affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan as he raised money for the Confederate monument, according to historians.
Tilsen’s calls to close Mount Rushmore put him at odds with Gov. Kristi Noem and other top Republicans in the state. She has ardently defended the monument, which is so connected to the state’s identity that it adorns most license plates.
“Those four men are etched into Mount Rushmore are incredibly important to our history,” the governor told Fox News this month. “We saw a movement to tear them down earlier this year. They needed to be protected.”
However, the National Park Service has said it will not allow the state to have another fireworks display on July 4 this year, due to both safety concerns and the objections of local objections. But Noem has indicated she will keep battling for the Independence Day display.
As we say, we're pleased to see this turn of events.
Watch “Hesapa: A Landback Film”, highlighting the events of July 3. The video is produced by Willi White, Oglala Lakota filmmaker and NDN Collective Creative Producer.
Photo: NDN Collective President and CEO Nick Tilsen walks to his first hearing after his arrest in his ancestral homelands of the Black Hills. Photo by Willi White.
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