Each Saturday, Buffalo Post runs a selection of stories from Native Sun News.

By Native Sun News staff

CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL –– There is an erroneous date of death for Crazy Horse to be found at Crazy Horse Memorial according to a former employee. He said that this information disseminated at the Memorial reporting that Crazy Horse was killed on September 6, 1877 is false.

Actually Crazy Horse was killed on September 5, 1877 at Camp Robinson near the community of Crawford, Nebraska, according to former Crazy Horse Memorial employee, Donovin Sprague. He said that this falsehood was created to show that the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, born on September 6, changed the date of the death of Crazy Horse to coincide with his birthday.

Sprague said that this fictional story is perpetrated in books and videos at the Memorial. He said one of the videos used daily states, “Thus many Native Americans feel that he (Korczak Ziolkowski) was destined to carve the mountain.”
Sprague said, “Your children need to know the truth because the books and video are disseminated throughout schools everywhere.”

Crazy Horse Memorial director Ruth Ziolkowski said she always believed that Crazy Horse was stabbed on September 5, 1877, but died after midnight on September 6. Sprague said this is false information because his research shows that Crazy Horse died before midnight on September 5.

Sprague insists that he has the correct information and he believes Korczak Ziolkowski changed the date to coincide with his own birthday to make it appear that he was destined to carve Crazy Horse on the mountain.

Tags: buffalo post, Camp Robinson, Crazy Horse, Crazy Horse Memorial, Donovan Sprague, Korczak Ziolkowski, Native American news, Native Sun News

The famed – or infamous, depending on one’s point of view – Sturgis motorcycle rally is going on this week in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and this story by the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal‘s Ruth Brown talks about a cultural exchange that’s part of it. No, we’re not talking comparisons of bikes and tattoos. It’s about two motorcycle runs involving Native people:

Sharing traditional stories and legends of the Native American people sets two motorcycle runs apart from the others during the Sturgis rally.

The Iron Pony Inter-Tribal Honor Run began Saturday, Aug. 7, in Wounded Knee. Native people from throughout the country are participating and sharing stories about their tribes.

“It’s a cultural exchange, and we can talk about each other’s tribes and share stories,” said Rex Carolyn, who is organizing the ride. “When everyone leaves they will go home knowing something about other tribes and tell their tribe about it. That’s how we preserve our culture. That’s how we make people understand.”

The Iron Pony Run began at Wounded Knee and moves to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation powwow grounds before moving on to Red Shirt Table.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Bear Butte, Bruce Hanson, buffalo post, Cheyenne Tribe, Crazy Horse Memorial, Iron Pony Inter-Tribal Honor Run, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Red Shirt Table, Rex Carolyn, Sturgis, Sturgis motorcycle rally, Wounded Knee, Wounded Knee Memorial Motorcycle Run

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

Tags: Aquinnah Wampanoag, BP oil spill, Cape Wind, Crazy Horse Memorial, Crazy Horse Student Living and Learning Center, Eastern Shoshone, First Nations, Fort Niagara, foster care, Gulf oil disaster, Interior Department, Iroquois Confederacy, Mashpee Wampanoag, Mohawk, Northern Arapaho, Oneida, Saskatchewan, Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Tuscarora, University of South Dakota Department of American Indian Studies, Wind River, Wind River Indian Reservation

That’s the idea behind a new tourism promotion campaign in South Dakota, which – along with the Oglala Lakota tribe – is marketing the Native American heritage within the state as a way to draw visitors.

The campaign features education programs at Badlands National Park, Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore National Memorial, as well as on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, according to this announcement.

The new Pine Ridge Area Chamber of Commerce, a volunteer group formed to boost the reservation’s economy, is part of the three-year exchange. The chamber is in Kyle, in the center of the reservation and near the Oglala Lakota College campus. A new motel and restaurant is located there.

“This agreement is intended to be mutually beneficial,” says chamber executive director Ivan Sorbel. “This joint promotion will significantly enhance the opportunities at all the sites for visitors to learn about Native American history and culture.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: Badlands National Park, buffalo post, Crazy Horse Memorial, Gwen Florio, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Native American news, Oglala Lakota College, Oglala Lakota Tribe, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pine Ridge Area Chamber of Commerce, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Tourism

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

Tags: "Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption”, Camp Liberty, Crazy Horse Memorial, Crow Tribe, Indian Adoption Project, Lakota, Mail-order tobacco, Morale, Seneca Nation, Welfare and Recreation

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

Tags: buffalo post, Crazy Horse Memorial, Mandan-Hidatsa, Native American news, Native Americans' Day

When Korczak Ziolkowski first envisioned his Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota in the 1940s, his dream went beyond the enormous monument, which remains decades from completion.

Ziolkowski and his wife, Ruth, also wanted to make the site a center for learning for Na-tive youth. This weekend, that plan came closer to reality when ground was broken on a $2.5 million Native American student living and learning center at Crazy Horse Memorial, according to this story in today’s Rapid City (S.D.) Journal.

The facility will combine classrooms and a 40-unit student residence all and is scheduled to open midsummer next year. The center will be among the memorial’s first for the private university and medical training center planned since the nonprofit memorial started in 1948.

Among those attending Sunday’s groundbreaking was donor Donna “Muffy Christen, who this summer established the Crazy Horse Centennial endowment fund with an initial $2.5 million donation. Investments supervised by the nonprofit South Dakota Community Foundation will generate yearly earnings to help fund the school’s operations.
Christen’s personal endowment eventually will total $5 million and be open to contributions from others, the story says.

The Crazy Horse Memorial remains controversial because of objections from people who point out that the Lakota leader never wanted his image reproduced in any way. But it seems like the learning center might be a different matter altogether.

Christen says Ruth Ziolkowski, now 83, inspired her to establish the endowment to help the school project.

“When she came up with this residents’ hall, it warmed my heart, absolutely. My theory is, the mountain carving will get done, but in the meantime she needs to see in her lifetime the residents’ hall and the university for the Native Americans, which was Korczak’s and her dream in the first place.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Crazy Horse Memorial, Lakota, Native American news

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

Tags: buffalo post, Crazy Horse Memorial, Native American news

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

Tags: Add new tag, Aerosmith, buffalo post, Crazy Horse, Crazy Horse Memorial, Native American news, Steven Tyler, Sturgis motorcycle rally