Native American Day

   What is Columbus Day in most of the country is Native American Day in South Dakota (It is Day of Indigenous Resistance in Venezuela and Nicaragua; and Day of Mourning for the Misery Diseases and Hunger Brought by the European Invasion of America in Bolivia – thanks to friend Steve Brouwer for noting these for us). In 1999 South Dakota was the 1^st and only state (until this year when it was joined by Vermont) to move to celebrate Native American Day instead of Columbus Day. In recent years there has been something of an awakening about this around the country and now dozens of cities also officially celebrate the 2^nd Monday of October as Native American Day.

   We were very pleased to be able to be part of a Native American Day celebration at Crazy Horse Memorial in Custer, which included a free bison stew lunch and an Indian dance performance. The Crazy Horse Memorial includes as its centerpiece a mountaintop carving of Crazy Horse, very close to Mount Rushmore. While the entire proposed sculpture is still unfinished (over 50 years since it was started), the face – which is finished - is 87 feet high/9 stories (the Mt. Rushmore faces are 60 feet). But it is controversial. It is controlled by the sculptor’s family and not Indians (Korczak Ziolkowski, the sculptor, did incredible work in envisioning and creating the sculpture but he died in 1982) and the museum attached to the memorial seems almost to be as much about Korczak as about Crazy Horse or Indian history and culture. Some Indians also question the wealth that family members have allegedly gotten from what has become a major tourist attraction; the untraditional depiction of Crazy Horse and even what they see as a desecration of the sacred Black Hills by cutting/dynamiting into it.

   Crazy Horse was a major resistance leader during the 1860s and 1870s, and was noted both for his military prowess and humility and for his unyielding opposition to U.S. imperialism and its efforts to seize Indian land and force the Indians onto reservations. He played a significant role, along with his ally Sitting Bull, in the Indian defeat of U.S. forces at the Rosebud and Little Bighorn battles in June 1876.  Within a year U.S. retaliation convinced Crazy Horse that military resistance was futile and he and his warriors agreed to cease hostilities. Three months later, however, fearing that Crazy Horse was about to resume his military activities he was arrested and in the struggle that ensued he was bayoneted to death by a soldier. He was 37 years old.

Crazy Horse memorial

Crazy Horse sculpture with memorial in background