In continuing testimony on two controversial historic murals at the former Ada County Courthouse, now the Idaho Law & Justice Learning Center:

Dallas Gudgell, a Lakota who grew up on a Montana reservation and has lived in Boise since 2006, called for removing the murals. “It’s genocide to me, and it’s really offensive for me,” he said, “so I believe that they need to come down.” He said Germans wouldn’t display murals of Hitler’s atrocities during the Holocaust.

Stephanie Clarkson, a board member of Preservation Idaho, said, “The controversial images we are focusing on today depict what happens in the absence of the rule of law. … In 2008 such a great effort went into providing these interpretive signs that so many people worked hard to put in place. We believe that the story that the mural is intended to tell is completely appropriate and fitting for a school of  law. … We ask that these murals be preserved and on display in the building, uncovered, with the appropriate interpreptive signage. … History may not always be packaged as what we’d like, but it enables us to learn valuable lessons.” She added that if the state decides to keep the murals covered, it should update the existing interpretive signs to add small pictures of the offending murals, so people can see what they look like without having to lift a cover.

Several other individuals, speaking for themselves, called for covering or removing the murals, some of them citing their own Native American heritage.

Larry McNeil, a professor at Boise State University, said, “The mural dehumanizes Native Americans because of their race, and for that reason alone, the mural should be removed from public view and placed in a state museum.”