The owner of a hotel in South Dakota was found liable on Friday for discrimination against Native Americans.
The owner of the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City will pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages to various plaintiffs who were denied service. The Rapid City-based Indigenous advocacy group NDN Collective, which filed the lawsuit against the Retsel Corporation, which owns the hotel, was awarded $1 per request made by the group to the jury, according to a press release.
“This case was never about money for NDN Collective – no amount of money will fix racism or make NDN Collective, and the people we stand for, whole,” Dr. Valeriah Big Eagle, Director of He Sapa Initiatives at NDN Collective, said in a statement.“Our relatives have fought against the weight of racism their entire lives. It is not just one moment, or one person, or one business where subtle and blatant discrimination has harmed Native people in Rapid City. Racism has been part of the undercurrent of the city for far too long – today’s victory shows we’re ready for something better.”
The Grand Gateway Hotel became embroiled in controversy in 2022 when its owner, Connie Uhre, posted on social media that Native Americans would be banned from the hotel following the murder of Blaine Pourier Jr.(Oglala Lakota) on the property. Uhre died in September 2025.
When members of the NDN Collective attempted to book a room at the hotel in the days following the social media post, they were turned away. The group filed suit against the hotel on March 23, 2022. The Department of Justice filed suit against the hotel in October of the same year for violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The incident and lawsuits drew global media attention and sparked protests outside the hotel for months.
In Friday’s decision, the jury also ruled in Retsel’s countersuit against NDN Collective that the group had acted as a nuisance in its protests against the hotel, awarding $812 to the company.
“Many of our relatives organized against racism in Rapid City and passed on to the spirit world before they saw justice served,” Nick Tilsen, founder and CEO of NDN Collective, said in a statement. “This fight is for our ancestors, for our sacred children and grandchildren, and for those whose voices and spirits have been silenced by those who dehumanize and attack Native people. We hope the outcome of this case makes it clear to the Retsel Corporation – and all businesses in Rapid City – that racism will always be bad for business, and that the Indigenous people in this community will never stop fighting for justice and equity.”
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Elyse Wild is Senior Health Editor for Native News Online, where she leads coverage of health equity issues including mental health, environmental health, maternal mortality, and the overdose crisis in Indian Country. Her award-winning journalism has appeared in The Guardian, McClatchy newspapers, and NPR affiliates. In 2024, she received the inaugural Excellence in Recovery Journalism Award for her solutions-focused reporting on addiction and recovery in Native communities. She is currently working on a Pulitzer Center-funded series exploring cultural approaches to addiction treatment.
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