Trump’s Interior Head: If We Take Down Confederate Statues, American Indians Will Complain Next

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says that if Confederate monuments are taken down, there’s no telling how far America might go —Native Americans could call for the removal of statues commemorating leaders who orchestrated violence against their ancestors. 

“Where do you start and where do you stop?” Zinke asked in an interview with Breitbart published Sunday. “It’s a slippery slope. If you’re a native Indian, I can tell you, you’re not very happy about the history of General Sherman or perhaps President Grant.”

William Sherman was a Union general during the Civil War who later used the military to force American Indian tribes to move to reservations. He wrote in 1868 that, “the more I see of these Indians the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.”