Monumental

Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial

Day 19

Our first stop in beautiful South Dakota was visiting what the local news station calls the “Shrine of Democracy.” (Local news station actually came out to do a story about our group…see it here at http://www.newscenterone.tv/stories/1714.aspx ) For those of you who have never seen the real Mount Rushmore…don’t get your hopes too high. It’s probably not as spectacular as you were expecting. However, part of the experience I did enjoy was when Jenni and I sat off to the side and observed the families who were visiting this historic monument. We saw a little boy about 9 years old being quizzed by his mother about why Abraham Lincoln was important to America’s history, and he was actually able to answer her question. His little sister chimed in with more questions about “the other guys up there” and what they had done to deserve a giant carving of their face on a mountain. Viewing Mount Rushmore as a tool for families to engage in a dialogue about our country’s history that otherwise might not have happened gave the monument a bit more charm than it had held at first sight.

We ate lunch in a small town named Hill City (where we had to visit 4 separate restaurants because 3 didn’t take credit cards….gotta love small towns…) and then headed on to see the unfinished monument of Crazy Horse. This was a bizarre experience. The work on Crazy Horse, which was designed to be the largest statue in the world- many times larger than Mount Rushmore- has been going on since the 1940s and it is not even half-completed. The elders from the predominant Native American tribe in the area, the Lakota, recruited a well-known Polish sculptor in the 1940s to erect a statue of the Lakota warrior hero Crazy Horse, because, in their words, they wanted the white man to know that “the red man has heroes too.”

It is my gut instinct to respond negatively to this project. On the one hand, it seems a reactionary response to the construction of Mount Rushmore in the Lakotas’ sacred Black Hills and to “white man’s history” in general. It seems to go against the traditional Native American value of preserving and protecting the Earth and the very humility of Crazy Horse himself, who is often described as a humble man who regularly retreated into nature to meditate. On the other hand, there is no denying the fact that the Native Americans’ stories have been left out of American history and continues to be. I can certainly understand the desire to erect a large public monument to one of their heroes simply to finally gain some kind of recognition for their past suffering- the Lakota elders who commissioned the work even says that the monument is supposed to speak for all Native North American peoples. Of course, that presents another issue- why is this Polish family responsible for creating a monument for Native American history?

At this museum that accompanies the unfinished monument, they show a video. I was excited at first to see it because I thought we were going to see a film about Crazy Horse himself. Silly me – it turned out to be this ridiculous documentary about the history of building the monument, focusing on this sculptor, Korczak Ziółkowski, and his vision for the whole project and how he recruited his children from a young age to help him in completing it. No joke, part of this film was a minutes-long montage of dynamite explosions, and you might be interested to know that there is a laser light show that is displayed on Crazy Horse on summer nights. While I am absolutely in strong favor for promoting education about Native American history, this whole monument project seems to be a strange way to go about it. The good part of the whole scenario is that once the monument is finished, there will be a cultural heritage center, a university and a medical center at the site as well, and honestly, the biggest statue in the world probably will be quite a tourist draw, so maybe if the end result is greater education, resources and appreciation for Native Americans, then the outrageous nature of the Crazy Horse statue shouldn’t matter. I haven’t made up my mind. Thoughts?

And bringing this back to the larger theme of the trip, how do monuments like these speak to what it means to be an American, maybe specifically, who are our heroes? What does one have to do in order to have your face carved into a mountain? Andi made a great point in the car on the way to Mt. Rushmore- why is it that we commemorate only the presidents (and a select few at that) on things like mountains and even our money? What about the everyday heroes who really did the most to build this country, the people who get no credit- the farmers, the small business owners, the street sweepers, not to mention women in general, slaves, immigrants, etc. etc. etc.?

I have more to say about this day, but I’m trying to cut down on blog length. I’ll write a post about our visit to Pine Ridge as soon as I get a chance. Again, I apologize for being so behind! Keep reading, and I love any and all feedback you’d like to give.