 Columbus symbolizes the destruction of Turtle Island. He symbolizes the missing and murdered Indian women. The fact that America looked up to that symbol and what it represented is the reason why it had to come down. My name is Mike Forsha, member of the Bad River Band, Lake Superior, Chippewa Indians. And this is where the Columbus statue once stood that I was charged with removing. I figured he was put up in broad daylight. He had to come down in broad daylight. I spoke with an elder of mine and he said, the time is now. You have to take action. The next morning I called the mayor, the lieutenant governor, the governor, told him my plans on what was going to happen. And then at five o'clock we got here. The rope landed at my feet. We wrapped it around his neck. We did it with prayer, with song and dance and tears of joy and tears of happiness. It was so beautiful. It was such a beautiful event. After the statue came down, I walked away. So many people were upset that the police let us do it and I got to walk away. Before I left, I gave them my driver's license. They knew who I was. I told them I would turn myself in. Later on that night, I went to the police station, turned myself in, I got charged. They let me go and we had restorative justice. So my attorney, Jack Rice, he's an amazing guy. And he had it set up where we could do restorative justice and that's a Native American value because we had no prisons, we had no police and I asked them, could we turn it into transformative justice? I said, what do you want to happen? And I said, well, people just have to know. People have to know what happened. I said, if I have to go to every classroom, I'll do it. My punishment should be out teaching and educating on the genocide that happened here on Turtle Island to create the United States. And he said, so that's what you want your punishment to be? And I said, well, yeah, if they could do it and he's sure enough, that's what my punishment was. They came to the conclusion that I should have no fine, there should be no restitution. And so I got sentenced to 100 hours of community service to teach in the schools and I've already turned in 150 hours and I still have several classes coming up in the near future. It's been great and I'm just not going to stop. And when I was first sentenced, I told the judge that I would be happy to do more than 100 hours. And it's been delightful. It's been pleasant. Just getting the message out there and seeing these kids and adults learning something that they never learned before. We need all teachers, especially native teachers out there teaching this exact same thing, the truth. That's what we need is the truth. The dominant culture is purposefully ignorant because they don't want people to know and they don't want their children and grandchildren to know what their ancestors did. And that's the only way out of this is by opening it up and shining a light on it. That's the only way we're going to get through this and it's going to be ugly. It's going to be messy, but it's something that has to be done. And I could talk about Columbus for hours and I have and same thing with the Redskins and the Cleveland and the changing of the names. But this isn't going to mean anything if we don't look at the future because that's where we're headed. Our concern should be what's in store for the planet and why we're killing every single day there's a species added to the endangered species list. The planet is burning and we get everything, our food, our clothing, our medicine, our housing. We get everything from the plants and the animals from the air and the water and we're losing something every day. That's where the message should be. That's what people have to understand is that we are killing the planet. We have to come together. We have to unite to save the planet.