Post by blackcrowheart on Feb 14, 2008 15:01:43 GMT -5
Battle over memorializing Sitting Bull
By ERIN McCLAM, AP National
Writer
STANDING ROCK INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. - You have to travel back in
time to get from the nearest town to the chipped and wind-whipped
little stone face that peers out over the Missouri River and the
endless plains beyond.
The drive from Mobridge across the river takes you from the Central
Time Zone into the Mountain, and if you turn off the main road and
clatter four miles down a winding path, you find it — a modest
monument on a lush green bluff.
This simplicity is striking because of what lies beneath: The
remains of Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief said to have foretold the
defeat of Lt. Col. George Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in
1876.
But it is more striking because of the state of extreme disrepair
that befell the resting place of one of the best-known American
Indians in history for half a century, until just two years ago.
It was shot and spat at, and worse. On the surrounding grounds
bonfires burned and shattered beer bottles glittered. Someone tied a
rope around the feather rising from the head of the bust, rigged it
to a truck and broke it off.
The site is on what is called fee land, within the boundaries of the
Standing Rock Sioux tribe but privately owned, and two years ago two
men — one white, the other a tribesman — paid $55,000 for it and
began cleaning it up.
They have plans for a $12 million monument complex they hope will
honor Sitting Bull's memory with the dignity missing for so long,
and let new generations learn about him.
But these plans, like Sitting Bull himself, are not so simple. And
they have torn open a wound over who will control the great Sioux
chief's legacy.
___
First some history.
By 1868 there was relative peace between the Sioux and the U.S.
government. The Second Treaty of Fort Laramie had secured for the
Sioux a patch of land in southwest South Dakota.
Then gold was found in the Black Hills, whites rushed in, and the
Sioux were ordered back to their reservations. Sitting Bull, having
retreated into Montana, was said to have had a vision of a slaughter
of soldiers.
Of soldiers falling like grasshoppers from the sky.
It was not long afterward that Custer and the U.S. Army's 7th
Cavalry were defeated at the Little Bighorn, in Montana, in the
summer of 1876.
In the same way the Civil War has names particular to points of
view — think "War of Northern Aggression" — Little Bighorn is also
known as Custer's Last Stand, and, to some American Indians, as the
Battle of the Greasy Grass.
The United States ultimately prevailed in the Indian Wars, but
Sitting Bull became, and remains, an icon, a hero to his people.
Later in his life he may have taken up — the point is disputed —
the "ghost dance" movement, which forecast the return to life of
dead Indians and an end to white domination.
This spooked U.S. authorities, and they went after Sitting Bull, who
had settled back at Standing Rock.
He was killed in a battle with Indian police and American soldiers
on June 15, 1890.
___
There are pictures of Sitting Bull — instantly recognizable, the
single feather rising from the parted hair, the look at once stern
and at peace — hanging today in the home of Ernie LaPointe, in the
Black Hills town of Lead.
He is a great-grandson of the chief, with a craggy face and jet-
black hair pulled back into a pony tail. And he is furious.
His mother always told him never to stand on Sitting Bull's back.
Never boast of your heritage, she said. LaPointe, 58, believes the
plans for a memorial complex atop his great-grandfather's grave are
doing worse — cashing in.
"They want to use our grandfather," he says, speaking for his three
sisters, "as a tourist attraction."
So this February he drafted a letter. He sent it to an assortment of
Sioux tribes, including Standing Rock, which claims Sitting Bull.
"North Dakota, South Dakota and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have
not honored their promise for proper care and maintenance of our
Grandfather's burial sites," the letter said.
It called for a "final reburial" — in Montana, at the site of Little
Bighorn.
"So that he may spend eternity," the letter went on, "at the sacred
place where his vision had predicted the greatest victory for our
people, the victory at the Battle of the Greasy Grass."
___
The two men who want to turn Sitting Bull's resting place into a
memorial complex are Rhett Albers, an environmental consultant who
is white, and Bryan Defender, who owns the sanitation system for the
Standing Rock tribe and is enrolled there.
They say people who come to the banks of the Missouri to see the
site are confused — wondering: Well, where is the rest of it?
Their plan for the site would stream visitors through
an "interpretive center," focused on the four Sioux ideals they say
Sitting Bull represented: Fortitude, generosity, bravery and wisdom.
Other features under consideration are a snack bar, offices and
meeting rooms, a gift shop and a restaurant serving wild game and
American Indian dishes.
Confronted with LaPointe's suggestion that all this adds up to an
attempt to cash in on Sitting Bull's legacy, they look perplexed.
"We are not wealthy people," Albers says over lunch at a diner on
the opposite side of the river. "We've donated our time and expense
and money to do this, pursue it, do it in a positive way."
Defender, 35, said he and Albers have met with groups on the
Standing Rock reservation and received an overwhelmingly positive
reaction to their plan. (The tribe's chairman did not respond to
requests to be interviewed for this story.)
Albers said they hope someday to recoup their $55,000, but have no
plans to draw salaries from the tourist center.
"It's not about the money," Albers, 45, says on a bumpy drive across
the river in his pickup truck. "It's about the man. And the tribute.
And to have these sites which everyone recognizes as being
significant."
The two men take pride in their friendship, pointing out that in
Mobridge, there is still lingering distrust between whites and
members of the tribe.
"There's all these hard feelings, racial discrimination all over the
world, and in this area also," Albers says. "There's a way we can
understand each other better, reconcile these differences, learn
from this tradition."
___
This is not the first struggle over Sitting Bull's remains.
The Standing Rock Sioux reservation, where the great chief lived his
last years, straddles the Dakotas, and for the first half of the
20th century his remains lay at Fort Yates, N.D.
The grave was poorly marked. Weeds sprouted.
So in the early 1950s, a group of businessmen from Mobridge
approached North Dakota authorities about having the remains moved
south of the state line. North Dakota balked.
And that is how, in 1953, during a blizzard and in the middle of the
night, a group from Mobridge, with a mortician in tow and with the
blessing of the Standing Rock tribe, dug up the remains and secreted
them into South Dakota.
Ernie LaPointe says his mother, Angelique Spotted Horse, was among
those who agreed to the 1953 disinterment, and was assured by South
Dakota authorities that the remains would be treated with dignity.
She had her doubts, telling relatives: "They never lived up to it
before. What makes them want to do it now?"
The Polish sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski contributed the granite bust
that marks the remains today. The bust is 6 feet tall and sits atop
an 8-foot pedestal yet still seems small set against magnificent,
mostly undisturbed, natural surroundings.
For a time volunteers visited the bluff to mow the grass and clean
up. But those efforts waned, said Larry Atkinson, publisher of the
Mobridge Tribune. Into the vacuum stepped vandals, drunks, partying
teenagers.
"It was isolated. It was up on a spot where you could see vehicles
coming," Atkinson says. "Kids are kids, and they saw it as an easy
place that everybody knew where it was. It was a party place."
It was also a dumping ground. Refrigerators were dropped there.
Shower stalls, too — tubs and faucets, the whole thing. Water
heaters, furniture, tires.
Bullet holes pock the shaft on which the bust of Sitting Bull sits.
Trashing the site became something of a rite of passage, Albers
says. You became a senior in high school here and you and your
friends drove out to Sitting Bull to raise a little hell.
He hears from them today. "You mean we can't have the senior keg at
Sitting Bull anymore?" Albers laughs.
"We're stopping that."
___
The aspects of the plan that anger LaPointe are the very attractions
Albers and Defender say are most needed to sustain a fitting
memorial to Sitting Bull — the visitors center, the amphitheater,
the snack bar.
The pair are in the early stages of raising an estimated $12.7
million to bring the memorial to reality. For guidance, they have
consulted the operators of a monument to Crazy Horse, carved into
South Dakota's Black Hills, about 200 miles southwest of the Sitting
Bull site.
More than 1 million people a year visit that still-unfinished
sculpture, begun by Ziolkowski in 1948, which features the Sioux
warrior atop his horse. Crazy Horse's head alone is spacious enough
to house the four presidential heads of Mount Rushmore.
Enthusiasts support the monument with memberships at donor levels
from $41 to $1,500. Pat Dobbs, a spokesman for the Crazy Horse site,
said its success has taken "quite a bit of effort and years."
___
LaPointe says he has the backing of the Little Bighorn Battlefield
National Monument to move the bones of Sitting Bull to Montana, and
that an environmental assessment is planned soon.
And he has the backing of Darrell Cook, superintendent of the Little
Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, where there are already some
memorials and markers recalling the battle in 1876.
If LaPointe is successful, expect nothing like what Albers and
Defender are trying to do in South Dakota.
"Sitting Bull, he was a humble man," Cook said. "I don't think
building memorials and visitors centers and that type of stuff is
appropriate."
The Smithsonian Institution, meanwhile, is researching
Sitting Bull's living descendants and preparing a "repatriation
report" for a lock of the chief's hair and a pair of his leggings it
holds, which would be returned to them.
South Dakota authorities, in letters to LaPointe, have deferred to
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which
says removal of human remains, even from private land enclosed by a
reservation, requires the consent of the tribe.
Members of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, which also claims
descendants of Sitting Bull, have voted to leave the remains where
they are.
Ron His-Horse-Is-Thunder, the chairman of Standing Rock, did not
return repeated calls from The Associated Press over several weeks.
But Tim Mentz Sr., who is enrolled at Standing Rock and handles
issues related to the repatriation law, said the tribe established a
formal "lineal tree" for Sitting Bull in the early 1990s that named
LaPointe as one, but not the only, direct descendant.
He refused to say who else was on the list. As for LaPointe, "He
cannot promote or say that he is the only closest relative," Mentz
said. "That is clearly false."
There are whispers that the dispute may wind up in court, and
LaPointe said he has been looking for law firms that might represent
him for free.
___
It is difficult to nail down any aspect of the dispute as provable
fact, particularly in a culture that for centuries has relied on a
tradition of oral history.
It is not even possible to nail down as fact the presence of the
actual bones of Sitting Bull on that Missouri River bluff.
One story that persists in North Dakota is that his remains are
still buried at Fort Yates, that fakes were placed atop them, and
that the fakes that were taken to Mobridge in 1953.
Another story goes further, holding that Sitting Bull's remains are
somewhere in Canada. According to that legend, the great chief
himself ordered that fakes be planted at Fort Yates.
The story holds that he foresaw a bitter fight over his bones once
he was gone.
___
On the Net:
Sitting Bull Monument Foundation:
www.sittingbullmonument.com/index.html
Smithsonian Repatriation Office:
www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/repatriation/
Crazy Horse Memorial: www.crazyhorse.org
By ERIN McCLAM, AP National
Writer
STANDING ROCK INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. - You have to travel back in
time to get from the nearest town to the chipped and wind-whipped
little stone face that peers out over the Missouri River and the
endless plains beyond.
The drive from Mobridge across the river takes you from the Central
Time Zone into the Mountain, and if you turn off the main road and
clatter four miles down a winding path, you find it — a modest
monument on a lush green bluff.
This simplicity is striking because of what lies beneath: The
remains of Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief said to have foretold the
defeat of Lt. Col. George Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in
1876.
But it is more striking because of the state of extreme disrepair
that befell the resting place of one of the best-known American
Indians in history for half a century, until just two years ago.
It was shot and spat at, and worse. On the surrounding grounds
bonfires burned and shattered beer bottles glittered. Someone tied a
rope around the feather rising from the head of the bust, rigged it
to a truck and broke it off.
The site is on what is called fee land, within the boundaries of the
Standing Rock Sioux tribe but privately owned, and two years ago two
men — one white, the other a tribesman — paid $55,000 for it and
began cleaning it up.
They have plans for a $12 million monument complex they hope will
honor Sitting Bull's memory with the dignity missing for so long,
and let new generations learn about him.
But these plans, like Sitting Bull himself, are not so simple. And
they have torn open a wound over who will control the great Sioux
chief's legacy.
___
First some history.
By 1868 there was relative peace between the Sioux and the U.S.
government. The Second Treaty of Fort Laramie had secured for the
Sioux a patch of land in southwest South Dakota.
Then gold was found in the Black Hills, whites rushed in, and the
Sioux were ordered back to their reservations. Sitting Bull, having
retreated into Montana, was said to have had a vision of a slaughter
of soldiers.
Of soldiers falling like grasshoppers from the sky.
It was not long afterward that Custer and the U.S. Army's 7th
Cavalry were defeated at the Little Bighorn, in Montana, in the
summer of 1876.
In the same way the Civil War has names particular to points of
view — think "War of Northern Aggression" — Little Bighorn is also
known as Custer's Last Stand, and, to some American Indians, as the
Battle of the Greasy Grass.
The United States ultimately prevailed in the Indian Wars, but
Sitting Bull became, and remains, an icon, a hero to his people.
Later in his life he may have taken up — the point is disputed —
the "ghost dance" movement, which forecast the return to life of
dead Indians and an end to white domination.
This spooked U.S. authorities, and they went after Sitting Bull, who
had settled back at Standing Rock.
He was killed in a battle with Indian police and American soldiers
on June 15, 1890.
___
There are pictures of Sitting Bull — instantly recognizable, the
single feather rising from the parted hair, the look at once stern
and at peace — hanging today in the home of Ernie LaPointe, in the
Black Hills town of Lead.
He is a great-grandson of the chief, with a craggy face and jet-
black hair pulled back into a pony tail. And he is furious.
His mother always told him never to stand on Sitting Bull's back.
Never boast of your heritage, she said. LaPointe, 58, believes the
plans for a memorial complex atop his great-grandfather's grave are
doing worse — cashing in.
"They want to use our grandfather," he says, speaking for his three
sisters, "as a tourist attraction."
So this February he drafted a letter. He sent it to an assortment of
Sioux tribes, including Standing Rock, which claims Sitting Bull.
"North Dakota, South Dakota and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have
not honored their promise for proper care and maintenance of our
Grandfather's burial sites," the letter said.
It called for a "final reburial" — in Montana, at the site of Little
Bighorn.
"So that he may spend eternity," the letter went on, "at the sacred
place where his vision had predicted the greatest victory for our
people, the victory at the Battle of the Greasy Grass."
___
The two men who want to turn Sitting Bull's resting place into a
memorial complex are Rhett Albers, an environmental consultant who
is white, and Bryan Defender, who owns the sanitation system for the
Standing Rock tribe and is enrolled there.
They say people who come to the banks of the Missouri to see the
site are confused — wondering: Well, where is the rest of it?
Their plan for the site would stream visitors through
an "interpretive center," focused on the four Sioux ideals they say
Sitting Bull represented: Fortitude, generosity, bravery and wisdom.
Other features under consideration are a snack bar, offices and
meeting rooms, a gift shop and a restaurant serving wild game and
American Indian dishes.
Confronted with LaPointe's suggestion that all this adds up to an
attempt to cash in on Sitting Bull's legacy, they look perplexed.
"We are not wealthy people," Albers says over lunch at a diner on
the opposite side of the river. "We've donated our time and expense
and money to do this, pursue it, do it in a positive way."
Defender, 35, said he and Albers have met with groups on the
Standing Rock reservation and received an overwhelmingly positive
reaction to their plan. (The tribe's chairman did not respond to
requests to be interviewed for this story.)
Albers said they hope someday to recoup their $55,000, but have no
plans to draw salaries from the tourist center.
"It's not about the money," Albers, 45, says on a bumpy drive across
the river in his pickup truck. "It's about the man. And the tribute.
And to have these sites which everyone recognizes as being
significant."
The two men take pride in their friendship, pointing out that in
Mobridge, there is still lingering distrust between whites and
members of the tribe.
"There's all these hard feelings, racial discrimination all over the
world, and in this area also," Albers says. "There's a way we can
understand each other better, reconcile these differences, learn
from this tradition."
___
This is not the first struggle over Sitting Bull's remains.
The Standing Rock Sioux reservation, where the great chief lived his
last years, straddles the Dakotas, and for the first half of the
20th century his remains lay at Fort Yates, N.D.
The grave was poorly marked. Weeds sprouted.
So in the early 1950s, a group of businessmen from Mobridge
approached North Dakota authorities about having the remains moved
south of the state line. North Dakota balked.
And that is how, in 1953, during a blizzard and in the middle of the
night, a group from Mobridge, with a mortician in tow and with the
blessing of the Standing Rock tribe, dug up the remains and secreted
them into South Dakota.
Ernie LaPointe says his mother, Angelique Spotted Horse, was among
those who agreed to the 1953 disinterment, and was assured by South
Dakota authorities that the remains would be treated with dignity.
She had her doubts, telling relatives: "They never lived up to it
before. What makes them want to do it now?"
The Polish sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski contributed the granite bust
that marks the remains today. The bust is 6 feet tall and sits atop
an 8-foot pedestal yet still seems small set against magnificent,
mostly undisturbed, natural surroundings.
For a time volunteers visited the bluff to mow the grass and clean
up. But those efforts waned, said Larry Atkinson, publisher of the
Mobridge Tribune. Into the vacuum stepped vandals, drunks, partying
teenagers.
"It was isolated. It was up on a spot where you could see vehicles
coming," Atkinson says. "Kids are kids, and they saw it as an easy
place that everybody knew where it was. It was a party place."
It was also a dumping ground. Refrigerators were dropped there.
Shower stalls, too — tubs and faucets, the whole thing. Water
heaters, furniture, tires.
Bullet holes pock the shaft on which the bust of Sitting Bull sits.
Trashing the site became something of a rite of passage, Albers
says. You became a senior in high school here and you and your
friends drove out to Sitting Bull to raise a little hell.
He hears from them today. "You mean we can't have the senior keg at
Sitting Bull anymore?" Albers laughs.
"We're stopping that."
___
The aspects of the plan that anger LaPointe are the very attractions
Albers and Defender say are most needed to sustain a fitting
memorial to Sitting Bull — the visitors center, the amphitheater,
the snack bar.
The pair are in the early stages of raising an estimated $12.7
million to bring the memorial to reality. For guidance, they have
consulted the operators of a monument to Crazy Horse, carved into
South Dakota's Black Hills, about 200 miles southwest of the Sitting
Bull site.
More than 1 million people a year visit that still-unfinished
sculpture, begun by Ziolkowski in 1948, which features the Sioux
warrior atop his horse. Crazy Horse's head alone is spacious enough
to house the four presidential heads of Mount Rushmore.
Enthusiasts support the monument with memberships at donor levels
from $41 to $1,500. Pat Dobbs, a spokesman for the Crazy Horse site,
said its success has taken "quite a bit of effort and years."
___
LaPointe says he has the backing of the Little Bighorn Battlefield
National Monument to move the bones of Sitting Bull to Montana, and
that an environmental assessment is planned soon.
And he has the backing of Darrell Cook, superintendent of the Little
Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, where there are already some
memorials and markers recalling the battle in 1876.
If LaPointe is successful, expect nothing like what Albers and
Defender are trying to do in South Dakota.
"Sitting Bull, he was a humble man," Cook said. "I don't think
building memorials and visitors centers and that type of stuff is
appropriate."
The Smithsonian Institution, meanwhile, is researching
Sitting Bull's living descendants and preparing a "repatriation
report" for a lock of the chief's hair and a pair of his leggings it
holds, which would be returned to them.
South Dakota authorities, in letters to LaPointe, have deferred to
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which
says removal of human remains, even from private land enclosed by a
reservation, requires the consent of the tribe.
Members of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, which also claims
descendants of Sitting Bull, have voted to leave the remains where
they are.
Ron His-Horse-Is-Thunder, the chairman of Standing Rock, did not
return repeated calls from The Associated Press over several weeks.
But Tim Mentz Sr., who is enrolled at Standing Rock and handles
issues related to the repatriation law, said the tribe established a
formal "lineal tree" for Sitting Bull in the early 1990s that named
LaPointe as one, but not the only, direct descendant.
He refused to say who else was on the list. As for LaPointe, "He
cannot promote or say that he is the only closest relative," Mentz
said. "That is clearly false."
There are whispers that the dispute may wind up in court, and
LaPointe said he has been looking for law firms that might represent
him for free.
___
It is difficult to nail down any aspect of the dispute as provable
fact, particularly in a culture that for centuries has relied on a
tradition of oral history.
It is not even possible to nail down as fact the presence of the
actual bones of Sitting Bull on that Missouri River bluff.
One story that persists in North Dakota is that his remains are
still buried at Fort Yates, that fakes were placed atop them, and
that the fakes that were taken to Mobridge in 1953.
Another story goes further, holding that Sitting Bull's remains are
somewhere in Canada. According to that legend, the great chief
himself ordered that fakes be planted at Fort Yates.
The story holds that he foresaw a bitter fight over his bones once
he was gone.
___
On the Net:
Sitting Bull Monument Foundation:
www.sittingbullmonument.com/index.html
Smithsonian Repatriation Office:
www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/repatriation/
Crazy Horse Memorial: www.crazyhorse.org