Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast · Alycia Asai

Public Memory & Myths: Matthew Davis on A Biography of a Mountain

·30 min·2 clips

The Lakota call the Black Hills “the heart of everything that is,” and the U.S. later broke the treaty that promised them the land.

1. Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast centers this episode on Matthew Davis’s A Biography of a Mountain and the making of Mount Rushmore. 2. Host Alicia interviews Matthew Davis, an award-winning author and journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. 3. The episode asks what Mount Rushmore means in 2020s public memory and why its history remains politically charged. 4. Davis says Donald Trump’s July 3rd, 2020 speech at Mount Rushmore pushed him to investigate the monument’s place in American memory. 5. He notes that the 2020 event included fireworks at Mount Rushmore for the first time since 2009. 6. Davis frames Mount Rushmore as both an iconic American symbol and a reminder of the nation’s failure to respect Indigenous land rights. 7. He explains the Lakota origin story tied to Wind Cave in the southern Black Hills and the trickster spider spirit Iktomi. 8. The Lakota call the Black Hills “the heart of everything that is,” and Davis uses that phrase to show the place’s centrality to Lakota identity. 9. He emphasizes that buffalo are part of the origin story and were central to Lakota food, shelter, weapons, and medicine. 10. Davis walks through the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the end of Red Cloud’s War, and the U.S. promise of Lakota land including the Black Hills. 11. He says the United States broke that treaty less than a decade later and took over the Black Hills in 1877. 12. Davis notes that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the government had broken the treaty and owed compensation. 13. He says the Lakota have refused the money and continue to want the land back. 14. Davis explains that George Custer’s 1874 Black Hills expedition found gold and helped shift U.S. policy toward seizure of the territory. 15. He also describes the Battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876 and the public anger that followed Custer’s death. 16. Davis says Gutzon Borglum brought technical skills from Stone Mountain, including work with dynamite, mountain carving, and political lobbying. 17. He describes Borglum as a self-made artist with a large ego, strong anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic views, and a belief in U.S. supremacy. 18. The interview moves at a steady, explanatory pace, with Alicia asking chronological questions and Davis answering with layered historical context. 19. Listeners interested in Mount Rushmore, Lakota history, and monument politics will get the most from it. 20. Listeners wanting a fast celebrity profile of Rushmore may skip it.

As heard by us

A serious Mount Rushmore conversation about myth, power, and Indigenous dispossession.

Matthew Davis and Alicia treat Mount Rushmore as more than a landmark. The episode looks at American mythmaking, federal ambition, and the harm built into a national symbol, then widens the frame through Borglum's earlier work at Stone Mountain and Doan Robinson's push to use a…

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Want Mount Rushmore explained as more than a postcard?

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