South Dakota Hotel Ordered to Apologize to Native Americans for ‘Racist’ Ban

The owners of a South Dakota casino-hotel that banned Native Americans from the premises must publically excuse to tribal organizations in the tell and throughout the Great Plains region. This is piece of a resolution to resolve a DOJ case that accused the Grand Gateway Hotel inward Rapid City of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Meanwhile, Connie Uhre, the 75-year-old proprietor who issued the anti-Semite(a) policy, testament be banned from serving as a theatre director of the accompany and from exercising any direction duties at the hotel for iv years.

In March 2022, Uhre wrote inwards a Facebook station that she could no more yearner “allow a Native American to come in our business, including Cheers,” the gambling casino sports bar that offers video lottery terminals (VLTs).

On the same twenty-four hour period her son, Nicholas Uhre sent an email with a similar tone, complaining “We don’t experience the tough ones from the skillful natives, so we hold to say no to them,” according to court of law documents.

Fatal Shooting

These announcements came a solar day after a shot in ane of the hotel rooms. Both the suspect in the crime, Quincy Bear Robe, and the victim, Myron Blaine Pourier Jr., were Native American.

Pourier died inward the infirmary 2 weeks after the shooting, and inwards later(a) Oct this year, Bear Robe pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. He is awaiting sentencing.

The hotel’s policy caused uproar, leading to several civil rights lawsuits and a spate of demonstrations by Native American groups and their supporters.

Members of ane such group, NDN Collective, attempted to book rooms at the hotel to examine the insurance and confirmed that they were refused.

Earlier this month, Connie Uhre was found guilty of II counts of plebeian assault for spraying protestors inward the human face with a feeding bottle of Pledge dust spray.

The Grand Gateway closed in(p) at the height of the disputation but has since reopened.

‘Naked Animus’

“The defendants’ direct in this case was egregious, motivated past naked animus, and amounted to an outright forbidding on Native American customers seeking approach to a public establishment,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “This form of mean lead invokes a long and painful account of negatively charged stereotypes against and exclusion of the Native American community,” she added.

Clarke praised the tribal elders, local officials, and Native American groups who took a tie-up against the hotel’s “shameful conduct.” She said the settlement would get off a subject matter to businesses across the US that “doors must be unfastened to all communities regardless of race.”

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