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Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) is piling on to conservative backlash against a retail giant, in part for donations it made to a Native-led nonprofit.
She says the company Target is fundamentally tearing down America.
South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s Lee Strubinger reports.
Conservative activists and media are criticizing the Minnesota-based retailer for offering swimsuits for transgender women.
Gov. Noem is joining calls to boycott the company by pointing to donations it has made to NDN Collective, a social justice organization in Rapid City that calls for returning the Black Hills to the Lakota.
In an appearance on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, Gov. Noem said the group is “anti-American.”
“This is a very extreme organization that’s raising these dollars from nonprofits such as Target and going forward and buying land and using it to infiltrate our American way of life and our value system. It’s dangerous. Steve, I’m like a lot of Americans. Love to shop at Target, but we just can’t anymore.”
Gov. Noem says the group wants to shut down Mt. Rushmore.
“It’s kind of madness that we’re in this era that efforts to fight for social justice are being villainized.”
That’s Nick Tilsen, the president of NDN Collective, the group Gov. Noem is criticizing.
He says Mt. Rushmore is a symbol used to obscure indigenous history in the United States.
“If we’re going to achieve racial justice and a reckoning and a healing in this country—the only way to do that is to tell the true history of this country. I think in the future Mt. Rushmore can be a place that that happens.”
Target Corporation has not returned requests for comment.
Twenty-four hours after Gov. Noem’s appearance on Fox and Friends, the term-limited governor sent out a message through a Republican fundraising text bank for donations to her federal political action committee.
Rhonda McBride interviewing Joe Senungetuk in 2020. (KTVA)
Alaska is mourning the loss of Inupiaq artist Joe Senungetuk, who wanted to leave a legacy for future generations.
As Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA reports, he leaves behind many contemporary art fans who loved his carvings, sculptures, and paintings.
Joe Senungetuk once said he wanted generations, hundreds of years from now, to look at his art and learn about the history and culture of Alaska Natives. But the Inupiaq artist leaves behind many contemporary art fans who loved his many carvings, sculptures, paintings and prints.
He died on May 31 at the age of 83.
(Joaqlin Estus / KNBA)
Senungetuk was born in Wales and later studied art at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the San Francisco Arts Institute.
As a young man, Senungetuk fought against producing commercial art aimed at tourists, which at the time was the only market available for Native artists.
Instead, he used his art to tell stories about his Inupiaq culture and its struggles to survive in a modern world.
His wife Martha says his pieces weren’t always pretty but had a lot to say.
“There’s hoards of people that just want to make pretty paintings. I know that he was one of a kind, that could not just create something that people admired, but something that will last for hundreds of years.”
Senungetuk was a student of Indigenous art the world over.
In an interview with Alaska Public Media’s Lori Townsend, he said the ancestors of Native peoples used art to tell stories.
“The original purpose of them were to give birth to an idea, to a dance, to a ceremony that would celebrate a new life.”
Senungetuk believed modern Native artists could use art in the same way.
He used it to make social commentary in pieces like one he called “Wonder Bread,” a mask painted with the mottled colors from a Wonder Bread wrapper, to express sadness over how the western diet has caused obesity.
He made another mask to tell the story of his own battle – and that of fellow Alaska Natives – with alcoholism.
He pulled out the upholstery from a bar stool to fashion a frame for a wooden mask.
He used springs from the seat to cover the mask, which made it look like a face behind bars.
He called his work “Imprisoned by State and Self.”
Senungetuk was also a writer.
Joe Senungetuk seated with two friends, the late Yup’ik traditional healer Rita Blumenstein and Yup’ik scholar Marie Meade, while attending the Rural Provider’s Conference in 2019. (Rhonda McBride)
In his book Give or Take a Century: An Eskimo Chronicle, he talked about his childhood in Wales.
He was most recently an Elder in Residence at Alaska Pacific University, where he and his wife Martha mentored art
students.
You could often find him carving and talking with students about Native culture.
“There is a fundamental lesson in knowing about your past, your culture’s past.”
Senungetuk said his culture was the inspiration for all his work. And although life was far from smooth, he once said cutting into soft wood with a sharp blade felt like a knife sliding through butter – a feeling he enjoyed all his life.
Alaska Pacific University plans to hold a celebration of life for Senungetuk later this year.
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