Traveling Teacher: Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse

Saturday 1 November 2014

Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse

Mount Rushmore is a monument to the first four presidents of the United States. Here you can see from left to right - Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. A bunch of white celebrities.

Mount Rushmore Monument

Selfie in front of the monument,

Profile of monument in the distance.

Then we drove on down the road to see an Indian celebrity in the making. Crazy Horse was begun in 1948, by Boston sculpture of Polish descent, Korczak Ziolkowski, at the request of Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear. Korczak knew that the project was larger than any one person's lifetime and left detailed plans to be used with his scale models to continue the project. Since his death in 1982, his wife Ruth, with seven of their children, work on the project and the foundation.

The mission of the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation is to protect and preserve the culture, tradition and living heritage of the North American Indians. The Foundation demonstrates its commitment to this endeavor by continuing the progress on the world's largest sculptural undertaking by carving a memorial of Lakota leader Crazy Horse; by providing educational and cultural programming' by acting as a repository for American Indian artifacts, arts and crafts through the museum; and establishing and operating the Indian University of North America. A very grand mission for an independent foundation that is not connected to any government funding!

Crazy Horse in the making.

Inside the museum at Crazy Horse are numerous Lakota Tribal artifacts. Here I am standing in front of a display of italian glass beads made by the guild, Societa Veneziana Conterie, who made beads for the fur trade.
They are stunning!!