Two Lakota state lawmakers are reacting to a tweet by President Donald Trump over the weekend.
Trump says Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a democratic candidate for 2020, should film an Instagram video at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
President Trump often refers to Senator Warren as “Pocahontas,” due to Warren’s claim of Native American heritage.
Trump tweeted a social media video of Warren over the weekend, suggesting she shoot the video from “Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen.”
Trump further suggest Warren’s husband dress in traditional regalia, which he calls “Indian garb.”
Democrat State Senator Troy Hienert is the minority leader and from the Rosebud Reservation. He says the battle at the Little Big Horn—or Greasy Grass—and the Wounded Knee Massacre are real occurrences that drive tribal relations with state and federal governments to this day.
“To me I think he thinks it’s like a movie, like he’s watching some old western,” Heinert says. “I don’t think he understands the human cost that came with those events. Over 300 men, women and children butchered in the snow? That’s not something that you make light of if you’re the President of the United States.”
One state senator suggests learning more about those two events.
Red Dawn Foster is a democrat who represents a district that covers the Pine Ridge Reservation. She says there are still remnants of those two events in her district.
“It wasn’t something that happened 500 years ago,” Foster says. “It is in relatively recent times. We have relatives that their great grandmother was there and have stories. So, looking at a wider audience, I would take this moment to encourage people to look into that, to learn about the massacre at Wounded Knee.”
Foster says that, and the Battle at the Little Bighorn isn’t just native history, it’s American history.