Rapid City Hotel Owner Arrested Following Altercation with Native American Protestors

The lodge proprietor who banned Native Americans from her house in South Dakota two months in the past was arrested today for assaulting protesters at a demonstration structured by NDN Collective. 

Connie Uhre, 75, the proprietor of the Grand Gateway Resort in Rapid Metropolis, was billed with a few counts of basic assault by the Immediate Town Law enforcement Office for spraying what appeared to be a cleansing agent in the faces of numerous people today outdoors the hotel. 

Uhre’s arrest was confirmed by Warren Poaches, a spokesperson for the Fast Metropolis police. “Additional facts on the crime will be accessible on Monday,” Poaches instructed Indigenous News On-line.

The incident, which was recorded, occured during a protest at the lodge that was arranged by NDN Collective. Equally Uhre and the Grand Gateway have been less than fire considering that March, when she manufactured disparaging reviews about Native American persons and banned them from the resort assets immediately after a shooting incident on the property that eventually still left one particular useless.

In a video released by NDN Collective, Uhre had a bottle of Pledge, a house cleansing merchandise, and sprayed a few independent instances towards other demonstrators exterior the Grand Gateway Resort.

“I failed to consider she would do that, currently being aged,” Lucie McClellan, 1 of the victims of the incident, advised Native Information On-line. “I was stunned and am dealing with three surgical procedures for my eye.”

McClellan has glaucoma and diabetic issues and attends the demonstrations with her husband. She’s at first from Ponca Metropolis, Oklahoma.

“We failed to know what it was, and at first I imagined it was mace,” Lloyd Huge Crow, just one of the demonstrators at Friday’s occasion, instructed Native News On the web. Huge Crow’s nephew, Blaine Pourier, was the victim of a shooting at the Grand Gateway on March 20.

“This is what we imply when we say that white supremacy is violent,” Sunny Crimson Bear, director of racial equity for NDN Collective, reported in a statement on Friday. Purple Bear was also sprayed by Uhre.

“Connie Uhre by now produced her view of Native folks apparent when she said she’d ban all of us from her company, and when her workers followed as a result of on that — those actions were violent.”

On Saturday, March 26, leaders of the Great Sioux Country in South Dakota and hundreds of demonstrators issued a “Recognize of Trespass (Cease and Desist) buy against Connie Uhre and the Grand Gateway Resort with hopes of shutting the business enterprise down. Soon after the purchase was shipped, the resort posted on its internet site that it is really “temporarily shut” and organizers have maintained protesting at the lodge property for the past six months, contacting the company “racist.”

“Connie Uhre’s behavior right now was not only racist, violent and disgusting — it was also unlawful,” NDN Collective President and CEO Nick Tilsen stated in a assertion on Friday. “This incident will be added to the federal civil legal rights lawsuit that was submitted in March.”

NDN Collective submitted a federal civil legal rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court docket-South Dakota Western District soon after customers of the companies had been denied area rentals two times in a row. The lawsuit alleges that the lodge methods “intentional racial discrimination from Native Us residents.”

Under South Dakota legislation, assault is codified as a Course 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to just one yr in jail and a high-quality of up to $2,000. Third, and a lot more, subsequent convictions for straightforward assaults are punished as felonies in South Dakota.

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Writer: Darren ThompsonE-mail: This e-mail deal with is staying safeguarded from spambots. You will need JavaScript enabled to check out it.

Darren Thompson (Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe) is a freelance journalist and centered in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, where by he also contributes to Unicorn Riot, an substitute media publication. Thompson has claimed on political unrest, tribal sovereignty, and Indigenous issues for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Indian Region These days, Native News On-line, Powwows.com and Unicorn Riot. He has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Article, and Voice of The usa on various Indigenous challenges in global conversation. He has a bachelor’s degree in Criminology & Legislation Studies from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.