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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem reacted with disdain and a vow to protect the Mount Rushmore National Monument after learning that retailer Target has financially supported a radical left-wing group that seeks to destroy it.
The GOP governor was responding to a Fox News investigation which found that “since the George Floyd protests and riots of 2020, Target Corporation said it ramped up its diversity, equity, and inclusion work,” adding that the retailer’s “agenda extended far beyond enhancing representation and support of historically marginalized groups externally and in its stores, and dipped into funding organizations with far-left and blatantly political agendas.”
Target intensified its DEI program with Kiera Fernandez leading the efforts as the diversity chief, the network reported. Fernandez has emphasized the need for action from all individuals, including “white women,” to address systemic racism in America.
Fox News discovered that Target, through its nonprofit foundation overseen by senior corporate treasurers, provided funding to a grantee organization advocating for the relinquishment and redistribution of U.S. sovereign land, including Mount Rushmore.
The grantee’s view is that Mount Rushmore symbolizes “white supremacy” internationally, while also supporting efforts to defund the “violent” U.S. military. In addition, the same grantee supports efforts to undermine Israel’s Jewish identity, including the implementation of the Palestinian “Law of Return” and employing economic warfare strategies like boycotts and sanctions against the Jewish State to advocate for a “Free Palestine.”
Fox News adds:
The Target Foundation’s webpage reflected that it funded the NDN Collective in 2022, a South Dakota-based nonprofit with a revenue stream that has reached as high as $50M+, according to its 2021 tax filing. NDN operates with a “racial equity lens” and is “dedicated to building Indigenous power [t]hrough organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking… and narrative change.”
The organization’s campaign “LANDBACK” called for America to give up its public land.
“The closure of Mount Rushmore, return of that land and all public lands in the Black Hills, South Dakota is our cornerstone battle,” NDN said. “Not only does Mount Rushmore sit in the heart of the sacred Black Hills, but it is an international symbol of white supremacy and colonization. To truly dismantle white supremacy and systems of oppression, we have to go back to the roots. Which, for us, is putting Indigenous Lands back in Indigenous hands.”
Noem took to Twitter to respond to the report.
“Target’s leftist execs support giving away Mount Rushmore,” she tweeted on Monday. “Not on my watch. America’s symbol of Freedom will endure.”
NDN also seeks to take funding away from the U.S. military.
“[T]he U.S. military is in the explicit business of taking land away from communities all around the world and using their presence on their land to carry out their own agenda for the inhabitants of that area. Violence is fundamental for the U.S. to maintain its presence, and the military is how they establish dominance domestically and internationally, wherever they may be,” NDN said, according to Fox.
“The origin of the U.S. military and police is rooted in the establishment of informal militias composed of newly arrived settlers looking to make money and own land,” NDN adds. “The purpose of these informal militias however was not to keep the peace or protect citizens, but to clear the land of as many Natives as possible by killing indiscriminately, and catching runaway enslaved Africans.”
In addition to NDN Collective, Target’s foundation has also funded the YWCA Minneapolis, an organization that claims it wants to incorporate “racial equity” into local policy beginning in 2019.
“We have to raise our children to see color; it is important that they understand that due to skin color, we are afforded different opportunities and often times our skin color impacts how we are able to move around in our society,” the group said.
