MEDORA, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – North Dakota’s leaders spent decades building up former President Theodore Roosevelt as a hero, highlighting his Badlands experience and conservation efforts.
But for Native Americans, who lived on the Northern Plains for thousands of years before the first European explorers set foot on the East Coast, Roosevelt’s name stirs a different set of emotions.
Roosevelt’s writings expressed a false belief in a racial hierarchy with white people considered to be superior to African Americans and Native Americans. He supported policies that harmed Native Americans throughout the country, including in North Dakota.
“Those policies were very devastating for Indigenous peoples,” said Loren White, a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. “We still deal with the policies and the long-lasting effects from them on a daily basis.”
Scott Davis recently stepped down as deputy assistant secretary of Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior. Before that, he was the executive director of the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission under then-Gov. Doug Burgum when the governor pushed for a Roosevelt presidential library to be developed in Medora.
“Theodore Roosevelt is a big name in the state,” Davis said. But he is viewed differently by tribal leaders. “He was very mean to us, very politically against us back in his day. Made the comment ‘any good Indian is a dead Indian.’ A lot of our tribal leaders remember that quote like it was yesterday.”
But Davis saw the writing on the wall. He knew the library would happen regardless of how Native Americans felt. So he prompted early connections between tribal leaders and the library’s leadership that led to a partnership and a commitment to incorporate Native American history into the new museum.
Davis helped secure initial buy-in from tribal leaders at the time. He asked one of Roosevelt’s descendants involved with the library, Theodore Roosevelt IV, to travel to North Dakota and speak with the tribal leaders about what his great-grandfather said and did.
“He was very open, the family was very open, and we had a very good, peaceful, powerful moment,” Davis said. “‘Do you share the views of your grandfather?’ And they said, ‘Absolutely not. In fact, we’re sorry.’ So that really set a good tone, a good stage for the tribes to buy into this.”
Mark Fox, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, said he learned from Roosevelt’s descendants at the ceremony that the former president grew as a person later in life and was not proud of the things he said in his youth. Fox said it’s a good thing when people grow and learn to be better.
“They should not have been made, but they were, and you can’t change history,” Fox said. “He continued to grow as a man and as a leader, and changed his views later in life. And we assume that that’s true because that’s what his family said, and we have no reason to believe otherwise.”
Serena Roosevelt, the wife of Theodore Roosevelt V, joined the library foundation’s board in 2017 and said outreach to tribal communities was a priority early on in the process. She attended the meeting with tribal leaders along with her father-in-law.
“We talked, and we listened, and we shared stories, and we committed, each person in that circle, to working together to build this place. To build a future on this land and to doing it in a spirit of openness and mutual respect and love,” Serena Roosevelt said.
That presidential library is on the verge of opening its doors to the public for the first time on Saturday. But rather than a tribute to a man who believed in white supremacy, the library is committed to humanizing, not lionizing, Roosevelt.
Native Americans working with the library hope it will be a holistic view of his virtues and vices alike, and prompt conversations to address the unhealed rifts between Native Americans and the United States.
“Our history, will it ever be fully healed and resolved? I’m not sure. Probably not in my lifetime,” said Prairie Rose Seminole, an Indigenous activist who serves on a Native American advisory council for the library. “I think that allows us an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialog and discourse in a way that’s not necessarily pointing fingers to who caused which problem.”
The library’s commitment
The library’s leadership is determined to confront Roosevelt’s beliefs on race and Native Americans “head on.”
“He had some horrible, horrible comments that he made about the Indigenous peoples which he had encountered. He talked a lot about civilizing races and people,” said Robbie Lauf, the library’s executive director, during a recent event hosted by Prairie Public. “I don’t even want to repeat some of his comments made specifically about Native Americans.”
The first narrative exhibit visitors will encounter features Native American history and details about Roosevelt’s views of Indigenous peoples.
“There is a video there that highlights TR’s views on Native Americans, and also the extermination of Native American peoples from the continent,” said Michael Patrick Cullinane, co-director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University and the senior historian for the presidential library since his hiring in 2021.
Roosevelt made racist remarks publicly. From an 1886 speech in New York: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the 10th.”
That statement was particularly ugly, said Dakota Goodhouse, a historian at the United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck.
“I do feel a little odd about the dedication of this library,” Goodhouse said. “I think any search we do would inform us he expressed racist ideology regarding American Indians.”
Historians note these beliefs were commonly held by others in Roosevelt’s peer group in New York, as well as the well-off ranchers in North Dakota at the time. They also acknowledge those remarks, and many of the policies that he supported were racist.
“He had a view of race that was based on hierarchies. It was based in part on genetics, but not entirely, and all of that is told in the museum,” Cullinane said.
Lauf said Roosevelt’s views evolved later in life.
“As his life went on he evolved, and learned, and grew and became one of the most deeply critical … people of his own actions and thoughts in the past,” Lauf said.
Goodhouse said every president should have a library in their name because it gathers so many resources for research into the person’s life.
Correcting the record
The library’s plan not to skip over elements of Roosevelt’s character has won it a measure of support among Native Americans involved in the process.
“The staff at the library have really been supportive of Indigenous history, incorporating Indigenous plants and language in interpretation at the library itself,” Seminole said.
Tribal leaders gathered to bless the land of the library site in 2022. An advisory council was formed to work with the library’s leadership to incorporate the missing narratives of Native Americans, develop a series of symposiums to discuss their history in the region, and more. There will be another blessing of the land, a performance and the unveiling of a Native American art installation at the library this week.
“When I do get there, I’m going to look around and say, are they showing tribes in a positive light? Are they respecting the very land that produced this legendary experience of one of our presidents?” Fox said. “I’m hoping and expecting it to be done in a proper way that gives credit and reverence for those that spent thousands and thousands of years in this area where this library is being positioned.”
White emphasized that Native American communities continue to suffer the consequences from the federal policies during that era. The Roosevelt family’s acknowledgement of those harms, and their belief that the president changed his views later in life, “doesn’t really change what had taken place,” White said.
“His legacy stands as a stark example of the profound harm and systemic inequality that can occur when immense power is wielded by someone driven by prejudice and discrimination,” White said.
Seminole said she hopes the library will have a long-lasting impact. She said she views it as an opportunity to correct some of the omissions from the history instruction most of America has grown up learning.
“We have young people from our tribal advisory group, and they’re like, ‘We were never taught about this stuff,’” Seminole said. “We don’t teach that alternative narrative to many of our presidents, right? We kind of talk about that American narrative of the hero and the one thread of their humanity that makes them super human.”
She’s had the opportunity to tour the library before it opens and said it presents Roosevelt’s story of grief and loss, but also how he was healed by love of the land, and it deliberately incorporates Indigenous history as well.
The Roosevelt family say they are committed to working in partnership with Native American communities on the library for generations to come.
“The generation that is building this library, in the form of my husband and me, is eager to move forward with respect for the Indigenous communities on this land,” said Serena Roosevelt.
A ‘demeaning’ statue
The goodwill bought by early collaborations on the library was nearly undone in 2023. The library accepted the loan of a statue that previously stood in New York City of Roosevelt on horseback, flanked by Native American and African American people in subservient positions.
“It was very derogatory and very demeaning,” Fox said. “We’re horse people. We’re a horse country up here. I will tell you, you’re walking in front of somebody and they’re riding, that’s more of a dominance thing.”
Davis said he was “very upset” when he first heard that news. Relations between the state and tribes that share geography with North Dakota had finally started cooling down in the years after the Dakota Access Pipeline protests near the Standing Rock reservation.
“Things are calm. They’re in a good place. And now you’re gonna bring the statue? Like, that doesn’t make any sense,” Davis said. “And so that was an idea from somebody somewhere. And thank God that never happened.”
The backlash was swift. But Davis said it prompted conversations with then-Gov. Burgum that led to a positive dialogue about creating space for Native American histories and narratives at the library.
The statue remains in the library’s possession, on loan from the American Museum of Natural History, but in storage. It will not be on display when the library opens on Friday.
“To be subordinate to any human being is just downright wrong, but the other side of it is to see that, hey, you know, he was racist. He thought he was superior to the Native American and to the Black man,” Davis said. “Maybe people don’t know that. Maybe people should know that. I don’t know.”
But ultimately Davis feels strongly the statue should be “melted down, thrown away,” or abandoned in a storage facility like the scene at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
“I hope it’s put away forever,” Davis said. “I really do.”
Cullinane said that is a matter to consider on “day two,” once the library is open and functional. He left the door open to displaying it in the future, as the library’s leadership has mentioned it might do, with the proper context and after consultation with Native American advisers.
“It’s a really complicated statue, and it should be noted as well that the American Museum of Natural History tried for two years to contextualize the statue, and it was still very difficult to do. So it’s going to be something that requires a lot of time and dedication,” he said.
‘Patriotism is not weakened by truth’
Roosevelt’s legacy includes leading the debate on important topics from antitrust regulation to conservation. But he also supported many policies begun by others that were detrimental to Native Americans.
Roosevelt supported the breaking up of reservations by parceling out tribal land to individual Native Americans. But that land was often sold off to white settlers, said Thomas Isern, a historian at North Dakota State University.
“White settlers demanded access to those lands and the government gave it. There was some allotment going on during Roosevelt’s presidency, come to think of it, here at Standing Rock,” Isern said. “But again, I consider that an inertia policy. He didn’t initiate that. It was running its course.”
The library’s senior historian said the intellectual argument for assimilation of the Indigenous people living on reservations was in some ways similar to immigration-related arguments in politics today. But it failed with Native Americans because the allotment policy fundamentally misunderstands Native American cultures.
“That’s really TR’s shortcoming in this. He doesn’t understand Native American culture. He doesn’t understand how land works. He doesn’t know how ownership works in a much more collective society, like the First Nations, and so that’s why allotment falls apart,” Cullinane said.
At the same time, Roosevelt was deeply influenced by the natural beauty of the Badlands he encountered in North Dakota. Native Americans consider much of that land to be sacred, of historical and spiritual significance. Fox said, “He preserved a lot of things that we would want to see preserved back when he was president.”
The library offers an opportunity to highlight the area for the rest of the world.
“It’s immensely beautiful. It tells us who we are, these Badlands, these grasslands, the Missouri River area,” Fox said. “The things that are tied to our history and culture. All of that is unique, and it’s very beautiful, and people need to see it that way.”
Serena Roosevelt said she knows Native Americans have a strong connection with the land the library sits on and wants to ensure the Indigenous community is involved in what happens on it.
“I also have tremendous respect for people who still feel a deep connection to an ownership of that land that was once rightfully theirs. We clearly have lots more work to do as a family, as an institution, to bring tribal communities and their members into this project, and ensure that they feel an ownership of all that’s happening there,” she said.
Rep. Lisa Finley DeVille, D-Mandaree, suggested the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations this week should include recognizing the thousands of years of Native American history before the country’s founding.
“Patriotism is not weakened by truth,” she said. “Tribal nations are pushed out of their homelands, forced into reservations, and introduced to devastating diseases by Europeans. Our sacred places became commodities, and the Earth became something to be bought, sold, and exploited for profit.”
Native Americans interviewed for this article said they hope that the bigger picture will be featured at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
“There was Indigenous people before he came, and while he was here, and we’re still here,” said Seminole. “How do we also share our narrative, and the history we have here, that shared history?”
The celebrations and the library’s opening this week could be part of that.
“We are not relics of the past. We are part of America’s present and its future,” Finley-DeVille said. “The United States is 250-years-old. Our nations have been here since time immemorial. There is room in this country to honor both histories.”
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