The owner, Connie Uhre, was upset over an attack on the 132-room Grand Gateway Hotel early March 19, in which the gunman and the victim were both Native Americans. He also expressed general concerns about what he described as growing crime in the city. “We will no longer allow any Native Americans to be in real estate,” Ms Uhre, 76, wrote on Facebook on March 20. “Or at the Cheers Sports Bar,” she said, referring to the hotel lounge where karaoke takes place six days a week. “The natives kill the natives.” Tribal relations in Rapid City have long been a powder keg, a Sioux City commentator wrote in The South Dakota Standard, and Ms Uhre “lit the match” last weekend. Ms Uhre’s comments were widely condemned by local officials, including the mayor, tribal leaders, law enforcement officials and other community groups. The post, as Native Americans and others said in interviews, was a glaring example of racism that stood out from the myriad of subtle and systemic species that indigenous peoples face on a daily basis. Nick Tilsen, president of the NDN Collective, a Rapid City-based pro-indigenous activist group, said he was shocked to see Ms. Uhre’s comments for the first time. “I was like, ‘Is it the 1960s in Montgomery or Birmingham Ala?’ he said, referring to sites of violent racism in the age of civil rights. “What is this?” His next thought: “We have to do something about it. We are not going to let it slip. Not here. Not in our community. We are not going to turn the other cheek into it. “ The NDN Collective filed a federal lawsuit for civil rights Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the western part of the state. The proposed group lawsuit alleges that Native Americans, including members of the NDN Collective, tried to rent hotel rooms two days after posting on social media, but were denied. The hotel’s actions are “part of a policy, motive or practice of deliberate racial discrimination against Native Americans,” the lawsuit alleges. On the same day as the lawsuit was filed, hundreds of community members and activists marched from a park to the federal courthouse in downtown Rapid City, where the NDN Collective held a rally and press conference. Ms Uhre declined to comment on the lawsuit. Her son Nicholas Uhre said Thursday that the hotel has never had a policy prohibiting Native Americans from renting a room. His mother’s comments, he said, were “stupid” and “emotional” when she was upset about the shooting. Police say a 19-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault and felony criminal mischief in connection with the March 19 shooting at a hotel. Late Thursday, a police spokesman said the victim, a young man, was “fighting for his life in hospital”. “Someone took a stupid post from a 76-year-old lady and they are using it for political purposes,” Mr Uhre said. “We rent to Native Americans all day,” he said. “We do not discriminate. “We never have, we will never do.” He called the NDN Collective members’ efforts this week to rent “bay” rooms. “If someone is up there to cause trouble,” he said, “we are not going to rent him a room.” Mr Tilsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, said the efforts to get rooms were sincere. “We went there to get rooms like we have all over this city all the time,” he said. “And they refused the Native American rooms.” Mayor Steve Allender, a Republican, said statements such as Ms. Uhre’s pit communities among themselves are harmful not only to Native Americans but also to businesses and the wider city community. “I condemn these statements in the strongest possible terms,” ​​Allender said in a statement. “They do not represent Rapid City and its people, nor America.” He added, “I urge the Uhre family to go public and denounce these statements and start remedying the community, especially the Native American people.” The cover-up of the comments also prompted local police to dismiss allegations that the crime was out of control in Rapid City, a town of about 75,000 people whose nearby attractions include Mount Rushmore. At the time of the coronavirus pandemic, “we did have an increase in certain types of crime,” said Brendyn Medina, a spokesman for the Rapid City Police Department, “but that reflects the country as a whole. “So there is nothing really specific about Rapid City and Pennington.” He noted that calls to and from the hotel were reduced by about 10 percent in 2021 compared to the previous year.