A statue of young Abraham Lincoln has been defaced with red paint and words referencing troubles with Native American tribes.

The statue has stood in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood since the city donated it to Senn Park in 1997.

And over Thanksgiving weekend residents around the park found the statue covered in splashes of red paint along with the words “COLONIZER” and “LAND BACK.” The vandals also may have written “Dakota 38” in possible reference to 38 Dakota Sioux members executed on Lincoln’s order following the U.S.-Dakota war in 1862, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The statue was one of many in the city examined as part of a commission set up after protests in 2020 that targeted statues of figures with controversial histories. {snip}

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The Young Lincoln statue is the second one vandalized in Chicago in the past six weeks: Anonymous vandals similarly spray painted a statue of Lincoln in Chicago’s Lincoln Park in early October, writing the words “Dethrone the colonizers,” Land back!” and “Avenge the Dakota 38.”

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