Ben & Jerry’s urges return of Indigenous land in July 4 post

Vermont-based ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s in a Fourth of July statement called for the return of “stolen Indigenous land” starting with Mount Rushmore.

“This 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” Ben & Jerry’s said on its Twitter page Tuesday.

On its website, the company talked about the importance of Mount Rushmore to Indigenous communities. Before South Dakota became a state, Ben & Jerry’s wrote, the mountain was known as Tunkasila Sakpe, or The Six Grandfathers, to the Lakota Sioux. It rises up from the Black Hills, Ben & Jerry’s wrote, which is land the Sioux consider sacred.

“The Great Sioux Nation, as the tribes in the area were collectively known, was forced to surrender its land and relocate to smaller reservations on land that the government considered ‘useless,'” Ben & Jerry’s went on. “From there, in 1927, they watched as their holy mountain, now located on land known as South Dakota, 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.”