Here’s how Susan Olp’s story of the Billings Gazette begins:

The Battle of the Little Bighorn is known around the world.

On Friday afternoon, about 500 people from as far away as England came to the Real Bird Ranch, adjacent to the Little Bighorn Battle Monument, north of Garryowen, to see the battle for themselves. The Real Birds, members of the Crow Tribe, have put on the re-enactment for about 17 years.

Visitors sat in bleachers overlooking the Medicine Trail Coulee, near where Lt. Col. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry met decisive defeat on June 25, 1876. The brown Bighorn River drifted along lazily in the background.http://buffalopost.net/wp-admin/post-new.php

Authenticity is critical to the success of the re-enactment of the battle, said Ken Real Bird. Members of the cavalry wear uniforms and use firearms similar to the ones fired in the battle.

Those who portray the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors are only permitted to wear breechcloths and moccasins. Most paint themselves and their horses with symbols of red, white, yellow and black.

Between 70 and 80 people re-enact the roles of the soldiers, the warriors and tribal members. Friday’s presentatoin of the battle was choreographed by retired Lt. Col. Bobby Jolley, from Fort Lewis, Wash.

Steve Alexander, from Monroe, Mich., portrayed Custer. Frank Knows His Gun, a member of the Ogallala Sioux Tribe, portrayed Crazy Horse.

Want more? There’s a whole photo array, a schedule of events, and of course the rest of this most excellent story. Click here.

Gwen Florio

The Rosebud Battlefield in southern Montana is now par with Wounded Knee, the Alamo and Mount Vernon in terms of National Historic Landmark status.

This week, a celebration on the 134th anniversary of the historic battle there between an alliance of Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne against the U.S. Army, marked that status. Lorna Thackeray of the Billings Gazette writes about it here.

The drum group Last Bear played and sang at the celebration for the Rosebud Battlefield. (Bob Zellar/Billings Gazette)

Estimates of the Sioux and Cheyenne force ranged between 1,000 and 1,500 warriors. The battle raged through six hours with soldiers and Indians advancing and retreating over the battlefield.

The Cheyenne call the battle site Kase’eetsevo’ – Where the Girl Saved Her Brother. The name comes from the actions of Buffalo Calf Trail Woman, who rescued her brother, Chief Comes In Sight, when his horse was shot out from under him.

By 2:30 that afternoon, with no clear victory for either side, the battle wound down. Crook lost 10 men and 21 more were wounded. The Sioux lost about 25 warriors and one Cheyenne was killed. Crazy Horse estimated the wounded at 63.

The major result was that [Gen. George] Crook withdrew his column to Wyoming, spoiling the government’s plan for a three-pronged assault.

A week later, and about 30 miles away, the same alliance of Sioux and Cheyenne were camped along the Little Bighorn River when Lt. Col. George Custer ordered an attack.

As William Walks Along, a member of the Northern Cheyenne’s Rosebud and Wolf Mountain National Historic Landmark Committee, told the people at this week’s ceremony, “events like this anchor me to the Earth.”

Thackeray recounts his comments that such sits have to be preserved so future generations will know their history.

“It is our duty,” Walks Along said.

Child death in foster care causes First Nations outcry
Twice in six months, children from the Sturgeon Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan have died in foster care under suspicious circumstances. The most recent case, that of a 22-month-old child, has prompted calls for a public inquiry, according to this CBC report. The little boy, Evander Lee Daniels, drowned in a bathtub and also had been scalded, according to this earlier CBC piece. watch a video, here.

Some Wind River Reservation residents told to seek high ground during floods
Even though floodwaters are receding in central Wyoming, residents in the Wind River Indian Reservation community of Sharp Nose are being told to seek higher ground because of rain and snow last night. With snow falling at about an inch an hour, authorities feared more flooding along the Wind River, according to the Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune, here.

New dorm goes up at Crazy Horse Memorial
The nearly-completed Crazy Horse Student Living and Learning Center was open to the public yesterday. The $2.5 million dorm will house the Summer University Program at Crazy Horse Memorial, sanctioned by the University of South Dakota’s Department of American Indian Studies, according to this Rapid City (S.D.) Journal story by Tyler Jerke.

Cape Wind opponents see parallels with gulf oil catastrophe
Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing wrote here last week about the massive wind-power project off the coast of Massachusetts, which is vehemently opposed by the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag nations. Opponents say the mitigation opposed for the Cape Wind project is akin to the safety measures that so badly failed on the BP rig now spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Fort Niagara adds Native American interpreters for truer history lesson
Every summer, Fort Niagara in New York hires history lovers and actors from Niagara University to portray characters who might have populated the region, and to explain its history to tourists. This year, those history interpreters include Jordan Smith, a Niagara Falls Native American educator, in the role of a Mohawk Indian, and Brenda Patterson, who is Tuscaroran and plays the role of a Seneca woman. The Mohawk and Seneca tribes are part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Read more here in the Niagara Gazette.

Gwen Florio

Three decades after founder’s death, quick progress on Crazy Horse Memorial
This story in the Rapid City, S.D., Journal makes clear that the Crazy Horse Memorial is proceeding toward completing, despite the death of sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski 27 years ago. The story gives a nod to the doubts among some Indian people about the memorial, given its location in the Black Hills and the fact that Crazy Horse would not allow himself to be photographed or sketched.

Senate bill takes aim at mail-order tribal tobacco trade
Indian Country Today reports here that the bill would prohibit the U.S. Postal Service from delivering cigarettes and certain other tobacco products. That would effectively putting Indian-owned mail order tobacco businesses out of operation. Needless to say, it has drawn an outcry from the Seneca Nation, which has a flourishing tobacco trade. “This holiday’s Grinch,” Seneca Nation President Barry E. Snyder calls the bill.

Native American Heritage Month celebrated in Baghdad
Yep, you read that right. Native soldiers at Camp Liberty Morale, Welfare & Recreation in Baghdad presented a program of songs, prayer and poetry, according to this report. The event featured, among other things, Sgt. Lauri Kindness, with 3rd Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. Kindness, from Lodgegrass, Mont., sang a Crow protection song.

Forcibly adopted Indian children feel effects decades later
This Denver Post story by Monte Whaley details the agonizing fallout from the Indian Adoption Project, part of a national social experiment conducted from 1958 through 1967. Susan Devan Harness, a Colorado State University cultural anthropologist, was one of those children and has written a book about it, “Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption.”

Opponents of California tribe’s casino plans turn to Congress
The fight over the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians’ effort to put a casino on San Francisco Bay has moved to Washington, according to this story in Inside Bay Area. Some members of Congress have written a letter urging Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to scrutinize tribes seeking off-reservation casinos.

Gwen Florio

While many places around the nation commemorated Columbus Day on Monday, at the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota’s Black Hills, it was Native Americans’ Day.

As part of the celebration, the memorial announced a new partnership with the University of South Dakota, according to this Rapid City (S.D.) Journal story.

Courses could be offered there as soon as next summer, when a classroom and residence hall now under construction are to be completed, Jack Marsh tells the Journal.

Marsh is a board member of the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, which will cover tuition costs for as many as 40 Native American students when the program is fully

Monday’s celebration was also meant to be a step toward racial reconciliation in South Dakota. It featured the recorded words of the late Gov. George Mickelson as he spoke about the state’s 1989 decision to replace its observance of Columbus Day with Native Americans’ Day.

Traditional singing, drumming and dancing entertained a large audience who also heard from several guest speakers, among them Mount Rushmore Superintendent Gerard Baker, who is Mandan-Hidatsa.

Baker told schoolchildren in the audience that he dreams of the day he can stand before a group of students and ask them what prejudice or racism is and “nobody would know the answer.”

To watch a video of yesterday’s event, click here.

Gwen Florio

This afternoon, workers at the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota blasted 4,362 tons of rock from an area called the 300 bench. The 300 bench represents work being done 300 feet below the top of Crazy Horse’s head.

To watch a video of the blast, go to the Rapid City Journal’s Web site, here. Videos are on the right-hand side of the page.

Gwen Florio

Here’s the entire story from today’s Rapid City Journal:

Officials at Crazy Horse Memorial north of Custer plan one of the largest blasts in the history of the project.

While work continues on the horse’s head, Wednesday’s blast will remove 4,362 tons from an area called the 300 bench. The 300 bench represents work being done 300 feet below the top of Crazy Horse’s head, according to a news release from the memorial. The blast is planned for 2 p.m.

While blast work is common at the enormous sculpture, blasts of this magnitude are very unusual. According to Crazy Horse officials, the 4,362 tons is the equivalent of 363 dump truck loads of rock.

For more information, call (605) 673-4681 or go to the memorial’s Weg site, here.

And, um, stand clear. There is, of course, debate over the propriety of the memorial, given that Crazy Horse refused to let his image be captured. (Maybe the pile of rock in that photo looks like him, but maybe not. I gotta say, it makes me a little hinky even to run the photo.)

There was some chatter during the recent Sturgis, S.D., motorcycle rally when Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler took a tumble from the stage, breaking his shoulder. Said stage just happened to be near Bear Butte, a site sacred to Native people, who have have gathered in recent years to protest the noise, loud music and drinking associated with the rally. I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but it just makes me nervous to mess with this stuff. You know?

Gwen Florio

They came from California, Colorado, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. – and Alberta, Canada, and even Switzerland – to south-central Montana yesterday to watch a re-enactment as educational as it was exciting. (Read about it here.)

The annual presentation is told from the perspective of the Indian people involved, and was written by Crow historian Joe Medicine Crow.

Among the participants was P.J. Pease of Hardin, Mont., who is Crow and Lakota. He says the role he plays of a Crow warrior – he’s done it for 13 of the event’s 20 years – carries forward to today: “That we will never stop fighting for our rights.”

Gwen Florio

Douglas War Eagle and his two brothers, Floyd Clown and Don Red Thunder, who are Miniconjou, will talk tomorrow about their grandfather’s memories surrounding the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Their presentation is part of Little Bighorn Days, commemorating the 1876 battle, which occurred on July 25 and 26.

The three brothers are descendants of Crazy Horse’s youngest sister and, when they were younger, sought and received permission from a medicine man to speak to their grandfather about his memories. They’ll speak at 8:30 a.m. Friday at Center Cinema in Hardin. Cost is $10. Read more about their story here, and click here to find out more details about the weekend’s activities.

Gwen Florio