Crazy(Horse)-ness!

I should adopt a more respectful tone here, as this is a complementary post to the "Mount (Rush)MORE Sculpture" post.

When Mount Rushmore was carved and finished in the 1930s, the Native American tribes who have suffered through America's expansionist history were rightly indignant living under the faces which might represent not the ideals of liberty and equality but repression, loss and despair.

Chief Henry Standing Bear sent a letter to this effect to the Keystone, SD government officials and it caught the eye of Korczak Ziolkowski, one of the sculptors who had worked on Mount Rushmore.

"My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too.", Standing Bear wrote.

And so Ziolkowski started. Although he was offered federal funding twice, he turned it down, wanting control over the project without "federal interference". Ziolkowski passed away in the 1990s and the sculpture is far from finished, but the Indian Foundation has taken over construction and it is anticipated it will be 80 feet tall when finished, which would make it the largest sculpture in the world.

It's in a very special spot, and I definitely recommend visiting both. Beautiful.

-Judy