Wiping Bad Graffiti Clean

If you have the owner's permission and cover a wall with high school representations of your junk, you can call it a mural. It stays there as long as the owner desires.

If you don't have the owner's permission and you paint something so great that zombie Michelangelo looks at it and calls it the Seventeenth Chapel*, it's graffiti. The owner can wipe that masterpiece off with paint thinner tomorrow.
*I know.

Sorry, I don't make the rules. When it comes to forming distinctions between public art and graffiti, as long as we hold private property dear, the only distinction between the two is whether or not the owner says it's allowed.

Which brings me to the biggest lump of sculptural-graffiti I know of: Mount Rushmore. In a spirit of full disclosure, I should add that I've been. I found it very unsettling, and the din of American flag music didn't drown out what I can only describe as the palpable energy of the place. I also took a picture shortly after the days when face-swap was what the cool kids were doing and left with this result:

Faces like this don't belong on these mountains. It's bad.

To be clear, my face doesn't belong on the mountain. But then again, none of the four faces up there do. They are graffiti art, and the land's owners are entitled to remove them. Those owners are the Sioux Nation of Indians.

I don't say this to be provocative: the land on which Mount Rushmore rests legally belongs to the Lakota people. This is not about whether or not the land is sacred, because that is not what I as a white person can talk about. This is strictly about whether or not this land belongs to White people, because I keep hearing how important the value of private property is to my White brothers and sisters. 

Land ownership requires contracts; as the United States of America expanded into North America, the Federal government entered into binding treaties with the people who lived here. Those are the legal contracts that govern land ownership in this country; trace a deed back long enough and it needs to come from a treaty in which the federal government "legally" took ownership of what is now known as the USA. Maybe we purchased the deed from another European power recovering from the Napoleonic wars, for example, but those deeds came with their own previous treaties that were transferred.

The land on which Mount Rushmore was carved are subject to the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, a treaty signed between the Sioux People and the US government. The US and tribal representatives agreed that this land was to be given to the Lakota. Of course, this treaty was signed before the word got out that there was gold in the hills, so gold prospectors quickly began violating the agreement and then demanding the protection of the US Army when they were met with resistance.

Imagine if a burglar were to come into your house and start going through your valuables. You can try to chase the burglar out or kill them, but if you do, the burglar will call the police, who will come fight you! That is exactly what happened, and while the Sioux managed to rid the earth of General Custer, they eventually lost the war and the US government annexed the land (unilaterally, no treaty) in 1877.

Now, suppose you see a man walk up to a car at a red light, smash the window, pull the driver out of the seat, get in, make a U-turn, roll down the window as he pulls up next to you and asks "Hey, wanna buy this car? $5 or a another gallon of PCP and it's yours!" Even though you and he may agree to the transaction, that car is not legally yours, no matter if the PCP (or $5) exchanged hands! That's my understanding of the law, and it comes with the disclaimer that I'm no lawyer but it makes sense to me.

In real life, if you steal land, it doesn't matter who you give permission to do what, that is not your permission to give. Sure, maybe whoever that weirdo guy who thought blowing up rocks to make them look like humans was connected to the klan, but that doesn't make a difference to me. I want to know if he had the owner's permission.

Also of note here, the fact that this is stolen land isn't even contested. In 1980, the supreme court ruled that yes, the land is Sioux, and they are entitled to compensation for it - but twist, they have refused the millions and just want the land back.

Expect to hear more of this - as the president highlights the tensions surrounding this land for the fourth of July, I expect to see this compared to the movement to tear down statues of confederate heros, but don't be fooled: these are separate issues. How America chooses to remember its own history on public land ceded to the US government is its own problem. The only resolution to this illegal graffiti is to give the original owners the rights to the land back.