FDR 4: What about the Indians?

Let’s pick up where we left off, with Trump. Consider this tableau:

There’s Trump on the side of that column at the right. Look at the face of that column. It may be a bit difficult to see, but that’s an Indian (aka Native American). We’ll come back to that. Look at the top of that column. I don’t know what “BDC” stands for, but “DON’T BE A VICTIM” is clear enough. While you are free to read that as a comment on the Indian, I’ve got an image (which I’m not posting) that shows that it was on the column before the Indian was.

Now scan over toward the left, looking at all the graffiti as your eyes move along. There’s a lot of THAT at FDR. We’ve got layers of paint, how many, who knows? Now look at the far left at that black panel on the column. We’ve got the letters “fdr” (in lower case) enclosed in a keystone shield, where we understand the keystone to by symbolic of Pennsylvania (“the keystone state”). Up at the top we have “SOBER VS. WASTED” and at the bottom, “WE HAVE YOU”. In other words, this is home, we are family.

THAT’s our context, all of it.

Look at this photo from 2017:

Look at the second column from the right, behind a low mound of dirt. Yes, it’s small, but I wanted you too see the image in its unblemished state. The image shows an Indian on horseback. To the right of his head it says, beneath what appears to be a halo or perhaps a crown, “SACRED LAND”. That, presumably, is a comment on FDR itself. Here’s a more recent photo, one with some red scrawls across it:

We can now see that it depicts a statue of an Indian on horseback, with “FDR” on the pedestal. Whatever the red markings are about, the underlying image is invoking the American Indian to consecrate – “SACRED GROUND” – FDR.

Now let’s go back where we started. Here’s the face of that column that had Trump on one side:

The figure is clearly male and the long hair and feathers indicate that he is Indian. The jacket almost looks like a double-breasted blazer or sport jacket. Almost. He’s holding something in his left hand. It looks like an arrow, but I can’t really tell. But we can’t be mistaken about the fact that he’s emerging from a keystone on which the letters “fdr” are inscribed in Black-letter font. The letters anchor the image to the skate-park itself. The keystone anchors the image in political structure of American history while the Indian links the image to the people who inhabited the land prior the colonization.

More later.