A recent social media post by a hotel owner in Rapid City, SD, announcing that Native Americans would be banned from the business after a shooting in one of the hotel’s rooms has sparked a swift condemnation of community leaders, an outcry and a federal civil rights lawsuit.
Its owner, Connie Uhre, was upset over an attack on the 132-room Grand Gateway Hotel on early March 19, in which the gunman and victim were both Native American. She also expressed more general concerns about what she described as increasing crime in the city.
“We will no longer allow Native Americans on the property,” Ms. Uhre, 76, wrote on Facebook on March 20. “Or at Cheers Sports Bar,” she said, referring to the on-site lounge that hosts six days of karaoke. a week. “Natives killing natives.”
Race relations in Rapid City have long been a powder keg, a Sioux City commentator wrote in The South Dakota Standard, and Ms. Uhre “lit the game” last weekend.
Ms Uhre’s comments were widely condemned by local officials, including the mayor, tribal leaders, law enforcement officers and other community groups.
The post, Native Americans and others said in interviews, was a blatant example of racism sticking out among the myriad subtle and systemic species that Indigenous people face every day.
Nick Tilsen, the chairman of the NDN Collective, an activist group in Rapid City that advocates for Indigenous causes, said he was shocked when he first saw Ms. Uhre’s comments.
“I thought, ‘Is this the 1960s in Montgomery or Birmingham, Ala.?'” he said, referring to sites of virulent racism during the civil rights era. “What is this?”
His next thought: “We have to do something about it. We’re not going to let it go. Not here. Not in our congregation. We’re not going to turn the other cheek.”
The NDN Collective filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in US court in the state’s western division on Wednesday. The proposed class-action lawsuit says Native Americans, including members of the NDN Collective, tried to rent rooms at the hotel two days after the social media posting but were denied. The hotel’s actions are “part of a policy, pattern or practice of intentional racial discrimination against Native Americans,” the indictment said.
The same day the lawsuit was filed, hundreds of community members and activists marched from a park to the federal courthouse in downtown Rapid City, where the NDN Collective held a rally and press conference.
Ms Uhre declined to comment on the lawsuit. Her son, Nicholas Uhre, said Thursday that the hotel has never had a policy that prohibits Native Americans from renting a room. His mother’s comments, he said, were “stupid” and made “in an emotional state” as she was distraught over the shooting.
Police say a 19-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault and committing a crime with a firearm in connection with the shooting at the hotel on March 19. Late Thursday, a police spokesman said the victim, a young man, was “fighting for his life in the hospital.”
“Someone took a stupid post from a 76-year-old lady and they’re using it for political purposes,” said Mr. uhh.
“We rent to Indians all day,” he said. “We do not discriminate. We never did, and we never will.”
He called the attempts by members of the NDN Collective this week to rent rooms ‘a stunt’. “If someone’s up there to cause trouble,” he said, “we’re not going to rent them a room.”
Mr Tilsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, said the attempts to get rooms were genuine. “We went there to get rooms like we always have in this city,” he said. “And they refused rooms for Indians.”
Mayor Steve Allender, a Republican, said statements like Ms. Uhre’s pit communities against each other and harm not only Native Americans, but the city’s businesses and the wider community.
“I condemn these statements in the strongest possible terms,” Mr Allender said in a statement. “They do not represent Rapid City and its people, nor do they represent America.”
He added: “I call on the Uhre family to speak up and denounce these statements publicly and make amends with the community, especially the Native American people.”
The flap over the comments also caused local law enforcement to back down on claims that crime had spiraled out of control in Rapid City, a city of about 75,000 whose nearby attractions include Mount Rushmore.
Around the time of the coronavirus pandemic, “we saw an increase in certain types of crime,” said Brendyn Medina, a spokesman for the Rapid City Police Department, “but that reflects the country as a whole. So there is nothing specific about Rapid City and Pennington County that we observe.”
He noted that the number of calls for service in the hotel and surrounding area decreased by about 10 percent in 2021 from the previous year.
