About time!
I used to tell my kids to kick them over when we were hiking. One time some hippy decided to scold me for allowing my kids to vandalize someone's "art". I just smiled, nodded my head and kept on walking.
I would have said, gesturing to the surroundings, "
This is the art I came to admire."
This might be less popular, but I could live without the heads carved into Mt. Rushmore.
Then, to somehow right that wrong they carved an equally egregious monument to Crazy Horse nearby.
I imagine Crazy Horse was rolling in his grave? I wonder what Teddy would have thought about Mt Rushmore? I quote him on the Grand Canyon-
"Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see."
A friend of mine was actively opposing the buidlings of astronomical observatories on Mt Graham near Tucson. The native tribes opposed the contruction saying that the mountain was sacred to their people. U of A and the Vatican said that there is no evidence the area was sacred to them because they built nothing at the site. The tribes responded, "Precisely because it is sacred we built nothing there."
When cultures collide.