Sioux Nation – Ingliando

On this day, the American sculptor of Danish descent, Gutzon Borglum, started work on the famous Mount Rushmore sculpture in the Black Hills of South Dakota, named by him “The Shrine of Democracy”. With the controlled use of dinamite followed up by the more delicate “honeycombing” process, the colossal 18m high carvings of the the four United States Presidents – George Washington (Foundation), Thomas Jefferson (Expansion), Theodore Roosevelt (Development), and Abraham Lincoln (Preservation) – took shape over the following 14 years. The chief carver of the mountain was Luigi Del Bianco, an artisan and stonemason who emigrated to the U.S. from Friuli in Italy and was chosen for his ability to imbue emotion in the carved portraits. The sculpture is built on land that was illegally taken from the Sioux Nation in the 1870s and remains a bone of contention today, with some critics of the monument referring to it as the “Shrine of Hypocrisy”.