Forums → WEPR → Crazy Horse Monument

Most of you should have heard at some point in your life that they are carving a giant monument of Chief Crazy Horse in the mountains near Mount Rushmore. At first, I thought it was a great thing, but after hearing a few things about it, I feel like this is a serious bad move. Before I go any further here is a picture.


The small figurine in the foreground is what it should look like when finished, and they've been working on it for over 60 years.


Anyway, onto the facts.

first, take a look at the picture. If I asked you just now who it was of, you would reply with Crazy Horse. However, Crazy Horse was so adamant about not having his picture taken that there is literally NO images, whether they be pictures or paintings, of Crazy Horse himself. So, not only do they not know if they are close to what he actually looked like, making the memorial kinda goes against his wishes to not be photographed.

The guy who is in charge of the project, Korczak Ziolkowski, was also the man who sculpted Rushmore. He decided to do the Crazy Horse memorial as a response to the controversy surrounding Mt Rushmore. It kind of misses the point about why defacing mountains in the middle of sacred Native American territory is a bad idea.

The actual pose of the statue is of an actual moment of history, in where a white man asks Crazy Horse "Where are your lands now?", to which Crazy Horse responded "My lands are where my dead lie buried."
The statue depicts Crazy Horse pointing, apparently to where his lands are. But hand gestures don't exactly mean the same thing in every culture. To most Native Americans, pointing a finger is considered "rude and aggressive."

now, knowing all of this, do you still feel the same way about the monument than you did 10 minutes ago?

I'll end with a quote by Lame Deer, a Lakota medicine man.

"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."