CRAZY HORSE: THE PEOPLE AND LAND SURROUNDING THE MONUMENT | BY: EMILY PRESS

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the famous Mount Rushmore mountain carving, but did you know that just a few miles down the road is the Crazy Horse memorial, and it’s even bigger! The Crazy Horse Memorial, which is still in the making, is a mountain carving monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain, roughly 17 miles from the famous Mount Rushmore, and the project began in 1948. The land surrounding the monument is considered sacred to the Oglala Lakota people. South Dakota is home to one of the largest Native American reservations in the United States. However, in order to understand the Crazy Horse Memorial to its fullest, it is essential to also know about the Lakota tribe and the importance of the sacred land surrounding the monument. In response to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse aims to offer a different take on American history. It is a response that tries to recapture the history of North America with the Native American’s in it.

The memorial which is expected to be the second tallest statue in the world, was meant to honor the Lakota people. More than just that, however, the memorial is meant to honor all Native American’s. Crazy Horse was one of the most notable Native American war leaders in history, as he once fought the U.S. federal government to protect his people’s territory. Crazy Horse himself was a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. However, there is much controversy that comes with the memorial carving of him. Basically, American’s like to believe that white Anglo-Saxon men really ‘started’ America, as portrayed by Mount Rushmore. America is a settler-colonial nation, meaning we were formed by the importation of practices, language, laws, etc. from Europeans. Europeans quickly outnumbered the natives and took over the land, bringing in a completely different way of life- one that opposes native practices. In addition, Early western films were fairly racist, and we haven’t always treated the natives fairly. As stated in a scholarly article, “widespread acceptance of such narrow and biased views of native Americans promotes thoughtless kind of racism…people who would never consider using ethnic slurs think nothing of saying ‘honest Injun’ or calling someone an ‘Indian giver.’ Children are still taught to sing ‘ten little Indians’ and although they may learn that Indians helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter in the New World, they seldom learn the name of the tribe” (Nose). The way we typically think about natives and the way we tell America's story oftentimes does not view them as equal actors. Native Americans have been treated unfairly by the rest of Americans for hundreds of years. We forced them out of their land, mimicked them with mascots and slurs, etc. Although this memorial was meant to honor natives, many are actually offended by it.

Taylor Danielle LaRocque, a member of the Lakota tribe herself, wrote an article vocalizing her personal experience with the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. She mentions visiting the hills as a young child every summer with her family as being some of her fondest memories.  LaRocque says, “in a place where everything from the soil to the air is sacred, the carving and blasting of a mountain seems to many Lakota the antithesis of their culture’s beliefs, and in some cases, exactly what Crazy Horse himself, would not want” (LaRocque). The Black Hills, a sacred landscape to many, is now being threatened by extensive tourism, mining, etc. “Since the Lakota’s’ forced departure from their sacred land, it has been opened to mining and mineral exploration, logging, and extensive tourism activity that has diminished the sacred nature of the land. The Crazy Horse Memorial, meant to empower and memorialize not only the Lakota Sioux but all-American Indian Nations, is a cog in this machine, a stop on a map for families spending their summer vacations in the hills” (LaRocque). Taylor makes it clear that the Black Hills mean a lot to her, her family, and her native ancestry. However, Americans have a completely different take on nature as a whole. Settler colonial countries such as America center on the idea that ‘this land is our promised land,’ while natives don’t believe in owning land. They believe that you live in peace with the nature, you don’t own it. “Because the essential goal of life is to facilitate a meaningful and collaborative membership in the earth community and to provide the tools to sustain such membership, traditional Native American educational methods differ from those of modern Western culture” (Morris). The response to Mount Rushmore by carving Crazy Horse in a mountain is essentially a copying of the way of thinking of the European settlers, shaped by the European settler ways of thinking about nature and claiming territory. This is a response that Crazy Horse himself would not have wanted. 

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Overall, Mount Rushmore tells the story of America through the lens of the political formation- very hegemonic. Crazy Horse aims to do the opposite by telling the story of America before presidents existed, before the republic- counterhegemonic. However, the cultural framework that shaped Crazy Horse is the same cultural framework that generated Mount Rushmore. The formation of Crazy Horse involves blasted into the land that natives view as sacred, but we view as ‘owned’. If Crazy Horse were alive, he would have never wanted this because while it was meant to honor natives and tell a different story about America, it went about doing so in a very hegemonic, settler colonialism way.