Crazy Horse News

Journalism is changing as so is the annual April gathering at Crazy Horse Memorial that encourages Native American students to consider careers in news reporting.

The 11th annual event will switch from a three-day conference to a week-long workshop geared for high school juniors and seniors.

Click Here for more on the Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop.

Crazy Horse hosted more than 100 Northern Cheyenne tribal members and their supporters during a rest stop while on this week’s 400-mile Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run.

The 11th annual run honors tribal ancestors who fled Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in January 1879, to avoid being forced to reservations in Oklahoma. Soldiers killed most of the escapees, but others made it back to traditional tribal lands in southeastern Montana.

The runners are mostly students, in fifth through 12th grades, attending schools in Ashland, Busby, Colstrip, Hardin, Lame Deer and St. Labre schools on or near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana.

The group toured the Crazy Horse visitor complex and received a complimentary lunch at Laughing Water Restaurant.

For more about the run, go to www.yellowbirdinc.org

Contractors continue advancing this week on the foundation for Crazy Horse Memorial’s first university student living-learning center.

Meanwhile, the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Board and delegates from the University of South Dakota are to meet Thursday, Jan. 21, to discuss details for this summer’s pilot education program in the dorm-classroom structure. Classes are scheduled to run for 10 weeks from early June to mid-August.

A seven-man J. Scull Construction team from Rapid City has completed concrete footings and walls for most of three sides on the complex. Tuesday’s concrete pour completed a large footings section for the fourth side.

Separate crews of Crazy Horse personnel and from Site Work Specialists are extending water lines to the site from two sources and building a pump house.

The $2.5 million project was funded by T. Denny Sanford of Sioux Falls and the ongoing operations will be funded by annual investment proceeds from a $5 million endowment, the open Crazy Horse Centennial Fund, established by Huron couple Donna “Muffy” Christen and her husband, Paul, with the South Dakota Community Foundation.

Crazy Horse Memorial personnel are in Pierre this week at separate outreach events.

On Wednesday, Jan. 20, cultural center educator Belinda Joe will participate in Native American Day at the state Legislature. Programs in the Capitol Rotunda from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. will include members of her Lakota hand games team from Rapid City Central, the Lakolkiciyapi powwow dance and singing group from Central, the Dakota Boys Drum Group of Fort Thompson  and the Pierre Indian Learning Center drum group.

Crazy Horse communications director Ace Crawford, creative director Linda Uphoff and Susan Beesley, assistant manager of Laughing Water Restaurant, also are in Pierre attending the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism.

The Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009, edition of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric spotlighted Crazy Horse Memorial as part of the network’s continuing “The American Spirit” series.

Atlanta-based correspondent Mark Strassmann, producer Daniel Steinberger and photographer Max Stacy were at the Memorial for a day in November. They interviewed Memorial president and chief executive Ruth Ziolkowski and her son Casimir “Cas” Ziolkowski, who is the foreman of the mountain carving crew. The CBS team also recorded a mountain blast, scenes of the Memorial’s grounds and the surrounding Black Hills. Excerpts of interviews sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski did with CBS 60 Minutes in 1977 also were used.

Strassmann, a 30-year broadcast news veteran, in an e-mail after the broadcast said he hoped to convey to viewers the scale and spirit of the Memorial’s ambitious project.

“Time and again, I’m always struck in stories I do by people who by sheer force of will or personality — or both — make big things happen,” Strassmann said. “But even by that standard, the story of the Ziolkowskis — Korczak in particular — stands out. This is a family that has literally moved a mountain. To me, carving the Crazy Horse Memorial is a story about many things. But most of all, it shows the American spirit alive and in action: visionary, daring, determined, resilient, and self-sufficient. We’re all living in a time when America needs those virtues from one coast to the other.”

Strassmann knows about traveling the country and world, logging 110,000 flying miles between assignments this year alone. Before coming to Crazy Horse, he reported on Mexican drug cartels establishing Atlanta as a distribution hub, and is in Las Vegas working on a story about the Southwest’s deepening water supply problems.

The Evening News averages 6.76 million viewers and Couric is the 2009 winner of the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in Media. She received the Freedom Forum honor during October ceremonies at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.

The “Crazy Horse monument rising” story is spreading to a world audience via the CBS News Web site and by Internet social networking links. And according to reporter Michal Sznajder, TVN24 in Poland plans to rebroadcast the story later this week. Polish media have long been interested in the mountain carving project started in 1948 by Korczak, a Polish-American born in Boston.

The Rapid City Journal reports that a new long-distance competition, the Run Crazy Horse marathon and half marathon, will be held next fall.
Veteran marathon organizer Jerry Dunn of Spearfish is teaming with race director Emily Wheeler to organize the October run from Crazy Horse Memorial to Hill City.
Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore National Memorial were previously featured for four years in a different marathon that has been discontinued.
For more, see Journal reporter Jeff Budlong’s report here.

Click here for larger poster

Thanks to Chip Davis for allowing use of his Mannheim Steamroller Christmas music, Crazy Horse Memorial will feature a festive evening program, “Mannheim Meets the Mountain,” from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Dec. 18 through Jan. 3. The music will stream through the Memorial’s visitor complex and public address system as colorful light beams play across the world’s largest carving in progress.

In addition, a nightly movie will be featured at 7 o’clock in the Memorial’s Welcome Center theater, including “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Christmas Carol,” and “Miracle on 34th Street.”
Admission for the light-music show and movie will be three cans of food per person for the KOTA Care & Share Food Drive.

The visitor facility is festooned with holiday decorations, and free cocoa will be available in addition to free coffee served daily at the Memorial. The Laughing Water Restaurant will offer food specials and the museum gift shop has holiday discounts through Jan. 4.

On Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, the visitor complex and restaurant close at 4 p.m.

Christmas Day, Dec. 25, the restaurant will be closed and the visitor complex closes at 4 p.m. The music and lights program will be shown both nights.
For details, call 673-4681.

Click here for the schedule

By Barbara Soderlin
Rapid City Journal staff

CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL — Korczak Ziolkowski has been gone for 27 years now, and on the anniversary of his death, people bring flowers to his tomb.

They walk up the gravel path, softened by damp moss and a mosaic of fallen aspen leaves, and shake hands with one of his sons, who stands to greet visitors on a cold fall day at the granite mountain encasing Crazy Horse, his stallion and the dreamer who created them.

Another year has passed since Ziolkowski died Oct. 20, 1982, at age 74.

Another year since he is said to have told his wife, “You must work on the mountain — but go slowly so you do it right.”

Another year for people to watch the progress and wonder, when will it be finished?

“Any time anybody asks me how long this is going to take, I say it’ll probably take less time than we think,” says Jeffrey Dean, executive director of the International Society of Explosives Engineers.

Read the Rapid City Journal report on Crazy Horse Memorial here.

As we celebrate the holidays we are mindful that this is especially a time of thanks and giving.

Each of us here at Crazy Horse has much to be thankful for – our lives, families, friendships and work. And our friendship with you is one of the gifts we truly treasure. Thank you for the support of our dream and effort to honor all Native Americans and the opportunity to serve with you in that endeavor.

Your help is proof that those who believe they will make a difference can achieve their goals. As I look out on a crisp blue Crazy Horse day, I believe that our best days are coming.

The gifts you share with us – the encouraging words, the financial contributions, the volunteer advocacy, the effort for the first-time and return visits – are an inspiration. I am thankful for those who light our way and nurture our future with kindness.

The growth of the project and the expansion in the ranks of our believers are a fitting tribute to the legacy of Chief Henry Standing Bear and Korczak, and positive examples for our children and grandchildren.

Wherever you are and whatever you celebrate in the coming weeks, we hope your holidays are filled with peace, prosperity, good will and love.

Thank you for your friendship, kindness and loyalty. May the happiness of the holiday season be yours throughout the New Year.

Sincerely
Ruth and the Family of Korczak

CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL – This week’s traffic lights change at Crazy Horse Memorial signals its shift to winter seasonal operations.

But work continues daily as weather permits, and at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, a blast on the world’s largest carving in progress will remove 2,589 tons from the horse’s head area.

Travelers on Crazy Horse Memorial Highway, U.S. 16/385 between Custer and Hill City, are advised that state highway crews have switched the intersection lights to flashing mode at the memorial’s entrance. Motorists leaving and entering the memorial must first stop, but other traffic continues under flashing amber caution lights.

During winter, the memorial is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, including holidays, with the Laughing Water Restaurant open until 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and serving brunch from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays.

Weekend admission to the memorial through mid-June is free, with a suggested donation of three cans of food per person for the KOTA Care & Share Food Drive.

At dark nightly, spotlights illuminate the mountain carving for one hour. Admission to the parking lot is free during that period.

For more about the nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial and its programs to honor Native Americans, call 673-4681.

Editorial Board
Argus Leader

Almost 27 years to the day after Korczak Ziolkowski’s death, another layer of his plan for the Crazy Horse Memorial is unfolding.

The site of his monumental sculpture is becoming a satellite educational affiliate of the University of South Dakota.

It’s practically a perfect match of mission and location.

The program will start next summer, if possible, with college prep classes and freshman-level college courses, including English, math and Native American cultural classes.

An important goal of the affiliate will be to boost educational odds for Native American students.

While college participation has been improving steadily for the past three decades, according to the Department of Education, Indian enrollment still is the lowest of any demographic group, and degree completion is about half that of the national average.

The combination of college-prep and freshman classes, with a potential to earn up to 12 college credits, will give students a leg up on both enrolling in and completing college.

All of this pleases Ruth Ziolkowski, Korczak’s widow and the president and CEO of Crazy Horse Memorial, because education was part of the couple’s vision for the monument from the beginning.

USD will benefit, too. What better place to teach Native American studies than at a site dedicated to remembering tribal history in the heart of the Black Hills, sacred to many tribal traditions?

Thanks to gifts from philanthropist T. Denny Sanford and Donna and Paul Christen of Huron, this program is a boon both for the memorial and USD – but above all, for Native American students’ potential success.

Additional Facts

THE FACTS

*     The University of South Dakota is opening a satellite educational affiliate at Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills.

*     Philanthropist T. Denny Sanford donated $2.5 million to build the complex. Interest from a $5 million endowment from Donna and Paul Christen of Huron will provide for operating costs.

*     Enrollees, mainly Native American students, will be able to earn six to 12 college credits.