Earlier this week, we posted a Digest: news of Rapid City protests and lawsuit against hotel that tried to ban Native people and Rapid City hotel vowing to ban Native Americans offered cheap rates at 2021 Sheriff Mack event.
The hits just keep on coming.
On Saturday, Vimal Patel reported for the New York Times, Hotelier’s Post Barring Native Americans Prompts Outrage in South Dakota:
A recent social media post by a hotel owner in Rapid City, S.D., announcing that Native Americans would be barred from the business after a shooting in one of the hotel’s rooms has prompted swift condemnation from community leaders, a protest and a federal civil rights lawsuit.
The owner, Connie Uhre, was upset about an attack at the 132-room Grand Gateway Hotel early on March 19 in which the gunman and victim were both Native American. She also voiced more general concerns about what she described as increasing crime in the city.
“We will no longer allow any Native American on property,” Ms. Uhre, 76, wrote on Facebook on March 20. “Or in Cheers Sports Bar,” she said, referring to the on-site lounge where karaoke takes place six days a week. “Natives killing Natives.”
Race relations in Rapid City have long been a powder keg, [Tom Lawrence] wrote in The South Dakota Standard, and Ms. Uhre last weekend “lit the match.”. . .
Read the story at the Times.
UPDATE: Another rally in Rapid City this afternoon. Tweets from SDPB reporters:
Protesters calling for the eviction of the Rapid City hotel whose owner called for a ban on Native Americans: https://t.co/2vbmPOmUxX
— Arielle Zionts (@Ajzionts) March 26, 2022
[end update]
On Thursday, Nathan Thompson reported in the Rapid City Journal, Hotel owner seeks Gov. Noem's help following racist comments fallout:
Nick Uhre, co-owner of the Grand Gateway Hotel, sent a lengthy email to Gov. Kristi Noem on Wednesday asking, in part, for her help to remove Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender from office.
Uhre's request follows the revelation of racist comments posted by his mother, Connie Uhre, where she said the Grand Gateway Hotel would ban all Native Americans from the property because she can't tell "who is a bad Native or a good Native."
Ian Fury, Noem's chief of communications, said her office normally does not respond to media requests about these types of emails but condemned the racist remarks.
“The Governor’s office generally does not comment to the media on correspondence received from private citizens. The Governor is opposed to all racial discrimination – there is no room for racial discrimination in South Dakota," Fury said. "Due to ongoing litigation on this subject, she will not be commenting further at this time.”
The ongoing litigation references a federal civil rights class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Retsel Corporation, parent company of the Grand Gateway Hotel, for denying services to Native Americans.
We recommend readers click through for the entire story--and Nick Uhre's full self pity and fingerpointing.
At Dakota Free Press, Cory Allen Heidelberger deconstructs the Noem administration's response in Noem’s Excuse for Silence on Rapid City Hotel Racism: She Can’t Comment on Ongoing Litigation:
There are two lines of baloney here.
Line 1 is this fiction that the Governor does not comment on ongoing litigation. She is not party to the civil rights lawsuit Uhre and his mom got themselves into by refusing to rent rooms to Indians this week. The lawsuit is in federal court, not state circuit court, so it’s not as if the Uhre case will be decided by members of the state judiciary appointed by Noem.
And pending litigation doesn’t shut Noem up when she wants the mic. Noem sure hasn’t clammed up about fireworks at Mount Rushmore, over which trivial subject there is ongoing federal litigation. She is the plaintiff in that lawsuit, and she has issued official state press releases to press her case. Noem is the defendant in pending federal litigation over abortion. She has commented voluminously on the topic, touted enacting restrictions identical to those enjoined in the lawsuit she’s losing, and written into law a provision saying that her new restrictions on abortion pills will take effect the moment she convinces the judge to change her mind and vote Noem’s way.
But throw a case at her where the proper response would requires acknowledging systemic racism against Native Americans, and incredibly, Noem’s well-oiled communications machine goes dry. . . .
Indeed.
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