Indigenous Woman Flips Off Mount Rushmore And Is Told 'Go Back To Your Country’
She was told to go back to her country, but little did they know...
@angriestfemme / TikTok An indigenous woman named Korben recently posted a TikTok to showcase the backlash she received after uploading an image to her Facebook profile.
The image shows a group of indigenous people that she was with flipping the bird at Mount Rushmore. Understandably, they’re trying to show themselves “sticking it” to one of the largest reminders of the horrors that our founding fathers had to commit in order to create the United States. Less understandably, people in the comments were not happy about it.
Comments on the indigenous woman’s posts told her to ‘go back to her country.’
The caption on her TikTok post reads “I can't even take white people seriously anymore,” but she explains what happened in the video, showing the photo as well. “I posted this on my Facebook. Did multiple white people comment saying go back to your country?” It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but she answered anyway, saying “You guys, they did. They did.”
If the irony is lost on you, a group of white people telling an indigenous woman to go back to her country is contradictory. Why? Well, indigenous means native — she’s Native American — and as a Native American, that means she is in her country of origin.
To explain the irony even further, white people came to this country from Europe and stole it from Native Americans, systemically oppressing them for hundreds of years and even physically displacing them from their original homeland.
Since this original TikTok didn’t actually contain any screenshots of the comments themselves, some people called her claims into question — and so she came back with receipts. The comment that tells her to go back to her country reads “I don’t care if you fly your ‘country’ flag…yet fly the American Flag also and stop saying ‘Well in my Country they do it this way.’ …if you are not happy then go back.”
Photo: TikTok
Other comments say things like “If you don’t like this country find another,” and “If they don’t like this Country, they need to pack their crap and leave,” which…is a pretty bad comeback anyway.
Photo: TikTok
The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States — the country that these people are so proud of — is quite literally Free Speech. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to critique the country you live in publicly, especially if you have a rightful place in doing so.
Even today, Native Americans face systemic inequalities and discrimination.
A poll published in November 2017, via Harvard School of Public Health, found that “more than one-third of Native Americans report slurs, violence, harassment, and being discriminated against in the workplace.” Some of these various forms of discrimination in the workplace consist of insensitive or offensive comments, slurs, violence, threats, and harassment both in a sexual nature and non-sexual nature.
Many reported that not only had they personally experienced these forms of discrimination, but they were also aware of family members who had similar experiences, and that’s not all. The report also touches on discrimination faced outside of the workplace as well.
“23% of Native Americans say they have been personally discriminated against because they are Native when going to a doctor or health clinic,” the report claims. 29% of Native Americans claim that they’ve faced discrimination when interacting with police, and many others have reported discrimination for tasks as simple as trying to rent/buy a house, applying/attending college, or even trying to vote or participate in politics.
Native Americans face both systemic inequalities and interpersonal discrimination to this day, and it’s devastating to see people on Korben’s post seemingly erasing the history of the nation they're so proud of from their minds.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.