A statue of former President Andrew Jackson that sits outside the White House was vandalized by climate change activists ahead of a planned march on Indigenous People's Day Monday.
Protesters wrote the words 'expect us' at the base of the monument, which is in full view of the White House - though President Joe Biden, who has been in Delaware for the weekend as usual, wasn't there to see it.
The demonstrations, which kicked off late morning on Monday, are a bid to force Biden to declare a climate emergency ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference beginning at the end of October.
Crowds of mostly indigenous activists marched down the streets of DC carrying signs that read 'Biden Reject Fossil Fuel Projects' and 'no pride in genocide' among others.
Hundreds of people were present, many dressed in traditional Native American garb and signing songs in Indigenous languages.
Demonstrators defaced a statue of Andrew Jackson that sits outside the White House ahead of today's Indigenous People's Day climate protest
Indigenous and environmental activists protest in front of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 11
The event was put together by a coalition of environmental groups called People vs. Fossil Fuels
It was just the first of a five-day campaign of demonstrations dubbed People vs. Fossil Fuels.
The event was organized by the Build Back Fossil Free coalition, which is made up of several indigenous and other environmental groups.
One of those groups, the Indigenous Environmental Network, endorsed the Jackson statue's defacement.
'President Biden woke up to a message on the Andrew Jackson statue in front of the White House today. On the base of the statue “Expect Us” was written with blood splattered handprints to represent the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic all over the statue of the genocidal President,' a statement released by IEN Monday said.
Biden didn't wake up to see the statue, however, as he's been spending the holiday weekend in Delaware with his family.
Today he and First Lady Jill Biden are attending a wedding in Pennsylvania. Cuffe Owens, the son of Biden's sister Valerie Owens, is marrying ex-Real Housewives of Orange County star Meghan O'Toole King.
Meanwhile Biden spent the weekend in Delaware with his family (pictured going to church with his grandchildren on Sunday)
Today he and First Lady Jill Biden are going to their nephew Cuffe Owens' wedding to Real Housewives of Orange County star Meghan O'Toole King
IEN appeared undeterred by Biden's physical location and shared a statement wishing for the downfall of all 'colonizers.'
It read, 'Our people are older than the idea of the United States of America...We are the children of the strong spirits who survived your residential schools, your pipelines and mines, your reservations and relocation, and your forced assimilation and genocide.'
'We carry the prayers and intentions of our ancestors and are unafraid. Another world is possible, may all colonizers fall.'
Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States whose forced relocation of Native American tribes was known as the Trail of Tears, in which an estimated 4,000 indigenous people died after being pushed out of their ancestral lands.
But it was the current Democrat in office that demonstrators spoke out against on Monday.
'We expect more from a president who has repeatedly listed climate change as one of his top priorities,' Greenpeace USA's Janet Redman said in a statement on the demonstration's website.
Meanwhile hundreds of activists marched on the White House demanding that Biden declares a climate emergency
Activists also want him to follow through on his shutdown of the Keystone XL pipeline by halting the Dakota Access Pipeline and the proposed Enbridge Pipeline 3 project
Center for Biological Diversity’s Energy Justice Program Director Jean Su equated fighting climate change to racial equality.
'President Biden’s lackluster plans continue to embrace the false solutions of carbon capture and storage and other market measures that landed us in this emergency to begin with,' Su wrote.
'We need to reject that broken paradigm and instead build a new climate
