Resisting Amnesia: The Indian Memorial at Little Bighorn

• In Event: Arguments For (and Against) Agency and Resistance in Native America: Considering the Possibility, Conditions, and Success of Counterhegemonic Argument

Abstract

In 1991, the Custer National Battlefield Monument was rededicated the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and a national design competition was authorized for an Indian Memorial. The name change and Indian Memorial were the result of years of protest on the part of Native Americans, including Russell Means-led protests in 1976 and 1988 during which a metal plaque was cemented into the grassy base of the 7th Cavalry monument. It read: “In honor of our Indian Patriots who fought and defeated the U.S. Calvary. In order to save our women and children from mass-murder. In doing so, preserving rights to our Homelands, Treaties, and Sovereignty. 6/25/88 G. Magpie Cheyenne.” The protests leading to the name change and Monument, as well as the reactions to them from Custerphiles, offer a compelling case in which to study the meaning of agency for Native Americans – both how activists saw their own agency, and how opponents to the Monument sought to resist it. The Little Bighorn site now presents Native Americans as agents of action, protecting their homeland, rather than as the acted upon parts of the scene of westward expansion.

Author

• Catherine Palczewski, Univ of Northern Iowa