White supremacist group, Big Sky Active Club has taken credit for etching Nazi symbols on an outdoor recreational area managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and named after a prominent Crow leader.
The neo-Nazi group confirmed that it is investigating graffiti carved into the Four Dances area, which is located approximately three miles south of Billings. The Big Sky Active Club said on its Gab social media account: “BSAC went on a hike and etched our message in stone. Tribe up or die.”
The carving showed a swastika with the number 14/88, a popular white supremacist symbol that refers to the “14 words” slogan, and 88, a numerical reference to the “Heil Hitler” chant used by Nazis and other hate groups. A second set of carvings shows the “SS” lightning bolts.
NGO StopAntisemitism, the leading non-partisan U.S based organization fighting & exposing antisemitism called upon the leaders of Montana to denounce & investigate the hottfic act of antisemitism.
Another carving showed a swastika with the message: “We are everywhere.”
Another Big Sky Active Club social media post named one of its members, who has not yet been charged, with carving the symbols.
“(Name) doing some nazi vandalism in the outdoors,” the post said, adding a couple of oranges, angry-faced emojis.
The Daily Montanan located the person in the picture on Facebook and reached out to him, but did not receive a response.
The National Park Service has classified the Four Dances as a “Special Recreation Management Area and an area of critical environmental concern.”
Four Dances was a spiritual and military leader for the Apsaalooke or Crow people. In 1830, he fasted and danced in that area, receiving a powerful vision, after being adopted by the great-horned owl.
“In these visions, the owl showed him a war shirt,” Elias Goes Ahead, a Crow historian, told the Billings Gazette in 2012. “So he produced a war shirt as he was shown in his vision. He went among the enemy in a battle against the Piegan near Pryor Gap. His war shirt was riddled with arrows and bullets, but he was not harmed, and he led the Crows to wipe out the Piegans.”