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Native American Dancers Perform at Crazy Horse

Last updated on 2014.03.30

We took a Saturday drive to the Crazy Horse Memorial yesterday. During our May visit, the mountain was framed by grim grey skies one afternoon, then completely shrouded in rain and fog for the rest of our trip. Not so on Saturday:

Blue skies, pine beetles, and Native American dancers honoring their people and us visitors with their talents.

Here's a welcome dance from four young Native American dancers:

And here's a young Lakota contest dancer:

The Crazy Horse Memorial, along with the planned university and medical center, will be a remarkable achievement of engineering, if the Ziółkowskis ever get it done. But can a big sculpture blasted into sacred rock by white folks make a difference in the lives of Native Americans?

...South Dakota State Sen. Jim Bradford, a Sioux who lives on and represents the people of Pine Ridge reservation, says Crazy Horse is not as relevant to today's Sioux as people would think.

"People on the reservation are more concerned with everyday life," he said. "The No. 1 problem is total poverty; everything revolves around that. We're struggling for financial independence. So consciousness about Crazy Horse and history are not relevant to what we're experiencing" [Bruce Dorminey, "Making Sense of the Crazy Horse Memorial," Miller-McCune.com, 2011.01.07].

I don't know if these young dancers or the deep-voiced elder who played the drums and alternated between discourses on the symbolism of the tipi and hoary Indian jokes were thinking about the economic or political significance of the monument. But the argument that this tourist attraction is an insult to the Sioux nation didn't keep them from coming to dance beneath the sun in the Black Hills.

p.s.: In random neighbor news, while we were standing at the take-home rock pile in the visitor center, we bumped into fellow former Madisonites Dan and Michele Ziebarth. They now live in Sturgis, where Dan herds the flock at the Wesleyan church. South Dakota is one small town.

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