Crazy Horse Memorial

Crazy Horse Memorial

A model of the planned statue, with the Crazy Horse Memorial in the background.
43°50′12.44″N 103°37′27.79″W
Location	Custer County, South Dakota, United States
Designer	Korczak Ziolkowski

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota. It depicts Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a private non-profit organization.

The memorial consists of the mountain carving (monument), the Indian Museum of North America, and the Native American Cultural Center. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain on land considered sacred by some Oglala Lakota, between Custer and Hill City, roughly 17 miles (27 km) from Mount Rushmore. The sculpture's final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet (195 m) wide and 563 feet (172 m) high. The head of Crazy Horse will be 87 feet (27 m) high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet (18 m) high.

The monument has been in progress since 1948 and is far from completion. If completed, it may become the world's largest sculpture, as well as the first non-religious statue to hold this record since 1967 (when it was held by the Soviet monument The Motherland Calls).

History

Henry Standing Bear ("Mato Naji"), an Oglala Lakota Chief and well-known statesman and elder in the Native American community, recruited and commissioned Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to build the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. In October 1931, Luther Standing Bear, Henry's older brother, wrote sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who was carving the heads of four American presidents at Mount Rushmore. Luther suggested that it would be "most fitting to have the face of Crazy Horse sculpted there. Crazy Horse is the real patriot of the Sioux tribe and the only one worthy to place by the side of Washington and Lincoln." Borglum never replied. Thereafter, Henry Standing Bear began a campaign to have Borglum carve an image of Crazy Horse on Mt. Rushmore. In summer of 1935, Henry frustrated about the Crazy Horse project, wrote to James H. Cook, long time friend of Chief Red Cloud, “I am struggling hopelessly with this because I am without funds, no employment and no assistance from any Indian or White.” On November 7, 1939, Henry wrote to the Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who worked on Mount Rushmore under Gutzon Borglum. Henry informed Korczak, "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too." Standing Bear also wrote a letter to Undersecretary Oscar Chapman of the Department of the Interior offering all his own fertile 900 acres in exchange for the barren mountain for the purpose of paying honor to Crazy Horse. The government responded positively and the National Forest Service, responsible for the land, agreed to grant a permit for the use of the land, with a commission to oversee the project. Standing Bear chose not to seek government funds, and relied upon influential Americans interested in the welfare of the American Indian to privately fund the project. In the spring of 1940, Ziolkowski spent three weeks with Henry at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, discussing land ownership issues and learning about Crazy Horse and the Lakota way of life. According to Ziolkowski, “Standing Bear grew very angry when he spoke of the broken Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868). That was the one I’d read about in which the President promised the Black Hills would belong to the Indians forever. I remember how his old eyes flashed out of that dark mahogany face, then he would shake his head and fall silent for a long while.” In 1947, Henry visited Korczak at his home in West Hartford, Connecticut. On May 3, 1947 after eight years of persistent persuasion, Korzcak came to the Black Hills of South Dakota to accept his invitation to carve the monument. After making models, Ziolkowski started blasting for the monument on June 3, 1948. When he began his work, Korczak was almost 40 years of age and worked until his death in 1982. During that time, he endured many hardships such as racial prejudice, financial burdens, and injuries from the work.

Memorial Foundation

File:Crazy Horse Memorial 2010.jpg

The Crazy Horse Memorial in 2010

The memorial is a non-profit undertaking, and receives no federal or state funding. The Memorial Foundation charges fees for its visitor centers and earns revenue from its gift shops. Ziolkowski reportedly was offered $10 million for the project from the federal government on two occasions, but he turned the offers down. He felt that the project was more than just a mountain carving, and he feared that his plans for the broader educational and cultural goals of the memorial would be overturned by federal involvement.

After Ziolkowski died in 1982, his widow, Ruth Ziolkowski, took charge of the sculpture, overseeing work on the project from the 1980s to the 2010s. Ruth Ziolkowski decided to focus on the completion of Crazy Horse's face first, instead of the horse as her husband had originally planned. She believed that Crazy Horse's face, once completed, would increase the sculpture's draw as a tourist attraction, which would provide additional funding. She also oversaw the staff, which included seven of her children.

Sixteen years later in 1998, the face of Crazy Horse was completed and dedicated. Ruth Ziolkowski and seven of the Ziolkowskis' ten children carried on work at the memorial. Ruth's daughter, Monique Ziolkowski, a sculptor, modified some of her father's plans to ensure that the weight of the outstretched arm is supported. The foundation commissioned reports from two engineering firms in 2009 to help guide completion of the project. Work commenced on the horse after two years of careful planning and measurements. Ruth Ziolkowski died May 21, 2014, at the age of 87.

Completed vision

The memorial is to be the centerpiece of an educational/cultural center, to include a satellite campus of the University of South Dakota, with a classroom building and residence hall, made possible by a US$2.5 million donation in 2007 from T. Denny Sanford, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota philanthropist. It is called the University and Medical Training Center for the North American Indian and the Indian Museum of North America. The current visitor complex will anchor the center. Sanford also donated $5 million to the memorial, to be paid $1 million a year for five years as matching donations were raised, specifically to further work on the horse's head.

Paul and Donna "Muffy" Christen of Huron, South Dakota in July 2010 announced they are donating $5 million in two installments to an endowment to support the operation of the satellite campus. It holds classes in math, English and American Indian studies courses for college credit, as well as outreach classes. The memorial foundation has awarded more than $1.2 million in scholarships, with the majority going to Native students within South Dakota.

Fundraising and events

Welcome ceremony for the UH-72A Lakota Light Utility Helicopter

The foundation sponsors Native American cultural events and educational programs. Annually in June, the Memorial hosts a Volksmarch, when the public is permitted on the mountain. Attendance has grown to as many as 15,000.

Much of the earth-moving equipment used is donated by corporations. The work on the monument has been primarily supported by visitor fees, with more than one million people visiting annually. The visitor center contains many pieces of rock blasted from the mountain: visitors may take samples in exchange for a small donation.

The Memorial began its first national fund drive in October 2006. The goal was to raise $16.5 million by 2011. The first planned project was a $1.4 million dormitory to house 40 American Indian students who would work as interns at the memorial.

Periodically the memorial publicizes blasting events, which attract thousands of people from all over the region. They may wait for hours as the clock counts down. The gala ends in numerous near-simultaneous detonations, and a great tumbling of rocks and dust down the mountain.

Controversies

Crazy Horse resisted being photographed and was deliberately buried where his grave would not be found. Ziolkowski envisioned the monument as a metaphoric tribute to the spirit of Crazy Horse and Native Americans. He reportedly said, "My lands are where my dead lie buried." His extended hand on the monument is to symbolize that statement.

Elaine Quiver, a descendant of Crazy Horse, said in 2003 that the elder Standing Bear should not have independently petitioned Ziolkowski to create the memorial, because Lakota culture dictates consensus from family members for such a decision, which was not obtained before the first rock was dynamited in 1948. She said,

They don't respect our culture because we didn't give permission for someone to carve the sacred Black Hills where our burial grounds are. They were there for us to enjoy and they were there for us to pray. But it wasn't meant to be carved into images, which is very wrong for all of us. The more I think about it, the more it's a desecration of our Indian culture. Not just Crazy Horse, but all of us.

Seth Big Crow, whose great-grandmother was an aunt of Crazy Horse (the Lakota are a matrilineal culture), said he wondered about the millions of dollars which the Ziolkowski family had collected from the visitor center and shops associated with the memorial, and "the amount of money being generated by his ancestor's name". He said,

Or did it give them free hand to try to take over the name and make money off it as long as they're alive and we're alive? When you start making money rather than to try to complete the project, that's when, to me, it's going off in the wrong direction.

Other traditional Lakota oppose the memorial. In his 1972 autobiography, John Fire Lame Deer, a Lakota medicine man, said: "The whole idea of making a beautiful wild mountain into a statue of him is a pollution of the landscape. It is against the spirit of Crazy Horse." In a 2001 interview, the Lakota activist Russell Means said: "Imagine going to the holy land in Israel, whether you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, and start carving up the mountain of Zion. It's an insult to our entire being."

Having the finished sculpture depict Crazy Horse pointing with his index finger has also been criticized. Native American cultures prohibit using the index finger to point at people or objects, as the people find it rude and taboo. Some spokesmen compare the effect to a sculpture of George Washington with an upraised middle finger.

See also

• List of colossal sculpture in situ
• List of statues by height
• List of the tallest statues in the United States

External links

• Official site
• Crazy Horse Memorial live webcam
• Rand III, Martin (2012-11-06). "A memorial for Crazy Horse 64 years in the making ... so far". CNN. Retrieved 2012-11-06. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)