Carving the Dream — Crazy Horse Memorial

Crazy Horse, SD — On any given day — weather permitting — the sounds of heavy machinery echo through the Black Hills just outside Custer, South Dakota. Little by little, the spirit of Crazy Horse emerges from atop Thunderhead Mountain, along with his stone likeness.

Chief Crazy Horse was a badass—and I mean that with the utmost respect. The Oglala Lakota leader was a fierce warrior who fought to preserve his peoples’ traditions and way of life. Together with Hunkpapa Lakota Chief Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and his men defeated General George Custer and his troops in the Battle of Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, a battle popularly known as “Custer’s Last Stand.”

It was a dark time in US history. White European settlers’ relentless hunger for expansion forced the Indians from their ancestral lands and onto reservations. Treaties and agreements were made, then broken. Shattered dreams and broken promises mark the so-called “Winning of the West.” Even today, Native American communities continue to battle for respect, facing such challenges such as high unemployment, alcoholism, drug abuse, and poverty. After hearing about endless varieties of kratom, you may be tempted to yawn when you hear of yet another Kratom strain. Surely, with all the various benefits that the other strains bring, there can’t be room for anything new that the Green Malay Kratom can bring? This is interesting because Green Malay Kratom really comes with its unique qualities. One of those is that it brings you all the merits of the rest but with longer durations than ever. Who would not leap at that? So let’s look closer at this special kratom strain and see why you might want to use it. The use of the Kratom plant extends back many centuries in the tropical East Asian regions where locals grew and used it to treat many conditions. Green Malay Kratom is just one of these special plant species which thrives in the Malaysian region of SouthEast Asia. But the plant also grows in the forms of strains in the nearby areas such as Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand. Kratom was virtually unknown to the western world until very recently when kratom exports began leaving the Asian sources into Western markets. There is a quickly growing demand for it in America, especially with the spotlight that has been cast on the opioid drug crisis. Also, more Americans than ever are suffering from chronic pain, and there is a quest for effective and safe remedies. Kratom is increasingly being considered as the ideal option. You can dig this site for Green Malay Kratom.

Korczack Ziolkowski was an emerging east coast sculptor in 1947 when he accepted an invitation to carve the stone tribute out of a Black Hills mountain. Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear invited Ziolkowski to carve the memorial, he wrote, because “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, also.”

Ziolkowski made the monument his lifelong mission, and although he died in 1982, his family continues his dream. The nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation does not accept public funding, and is entirely dependent upon donations and admission fees, so the memorial’s completion date is uncertain, at the mercy of the whims of the economy and the weather. When finished, the chief astride his stallion will be the world’s largest mountain carving at 641 feet long by 563 feet high.

The memorial attracts over a million visitors a year, many of them attendees of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in August. At $5 per rider, it’s a bargain, and a Black Hills must-see.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Crazy Horse Memorial

12151 Avenue of the Chiefs
Crazy Horse, SD 57730-8900
605.673.4681

www.crazyhorsememorial.org