Smoke Signals December 1990
page 15
Indian Tribute Plan Sparks
a New Battle At Little Bighorn
Native American Park Chief Seeks a Balanced
Exhibit, Outraging Custer Buffs
By Brett Pulley
CROW AGENCY, MONT. - Last Stand Hill is a steep
slope carpeted with buffalo grass, purple wildflowers
and legends. This is where, on a blistering hot June
afternoon in 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
and his Seventh Cavalry fell to Sioux and Cheyenne
Indians. White marble markers designate where each of
the 225 cavalrymen died.
Now, fresh battles are disturbing the cemetery-like
calm here at Custer Battlefield National Monument.
From her National Park Service office near the bank of
the Little Bighorn River, Superintendent Barbara
Boohcr is waging what some hope is her own last stand.
Some Custer buffs are at war with her for leading a
drive to place a $2 million memorial near the large
granite obelisk that honors Mr. Custer and his men.
The dispute? The new memorial would honor the
fallen Indians.
'Heroes' and 'Hostile Indians'
"They were the enemy," says Jerry Russell, president
of the 700-member Order of the Indian Wars. Another
Custer buff, in the order's newsletter, asked: "What's
next? A Shinto temple to the Japanese Air Force on the
site of the Arizona? How about a posthumous Oscar to
John Wilkes Booth at the Ford Theater for 'Out
standing Performance by an Actor'?"
Much of the ire is focused on Ms. Boohcr, the first
Native American to over-see the 760-acre park and
Custer monument. Ms. Booher, whose parents are from
the Northern Ute and Cherokee Tribes, wants a more
even-handed account in the tours and exhibits of what
happened here.
"After all," she says, "Custer was only here for one
afternoon. The Indians were here for years."
Throughout the park, which is visited by 250,000
tourists a year, the cavalrymen are referred to on
historical markers and elsewhere as "fallen heroes"
while the Cheyenne and Sioux are "hostile Indians."
Ms. Booher plans to change that.
And instead of simply informing visitors how the
"brave cavalrymen" were left mutilated, Ms. Boohcr
wants guides and museum pamphlets to better explain
that the Indians grew hostile because they were forcibly
driven from their sacred homelands by gold-hungry
miners and settlers.
The U.S. Senate is even considering changing the
Park's name to the more neutral Little Bighorn National
Monument. Supporters of the change have argued for
years that most battlefields aren't named for people,
especially losers. ,
That would be a highly controversial move, but
controversy has always surrounded the celebrated battle
here and the flamboyant cavalry leader. Since no
cavalrymen survived, details have been pieced together
from accounts of surviving Indians and of cavalry troops
who later discovered their comrades' bodies. Many
early Indian accounts were lost through bad interpreta
tion or dismissed as untrue. Myths and legends grew
instead, leaving a forever-clouded account.
For his part, Mr. Custer has inspired hundreds of
z books and articles, more than a dozen movies and a
television mini-series now in the works. Ronald Reagan
even portrayed Custer once, in the 1940 movie "Santa
Fe Trail" .
But as history continues to romanticize Mr. Custer and
his fallen troops, Native Americans have grown resentful
that only a small, painted board honors the estimated
100 Indians who died here. Such sentiments sparked the
movement to erect an Indian memorial.
Two years ago, Indian activist Russell Means led a
band of Native Americans to the park, where they ,
erected a flat metal Indian "monument" by pouring a
concrete base atop the graves of the cavalry soldiers.
Park administrators, to avoid a confrontation, stood by
and watched. Weeks later, the makeshift monument
was removed.
The incident incensed Custer loyalists. "Anyone else
would have been arrested for that," says William Wells,
a director of the Custer Battlefield Historical and
Museum Association, who angrily watched as the
memorial was erected. His 3,000 member, nonprofit
group, which has no Indian members, operates the park
museum and bookstore in cooperation with the park "
service.
The group is one of three nationwide organizations,
with a total membership of 4,600, dedicated to preserv
ing the memory of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and
to studying and upholding the legend and lore of their
brash, golden-haired hero.
Some of those members are furious at Ms. Booher.
"She's only in that position because she's a woman and
an Indian," says Mr. Russell of the Order of the Indian
Wars. "We won't rest until she's out."
"Now I know why my office has three windows,"
responds the soft-spoken, 49 year old superintendent.
"So I can see what's coming next." She labels her
detractors "a dangerous few."
Before her appointment in June 1989, Mr. Boohcr
worked with the federal government in Anchorage,
Alaska, including 10 years with the Federal Aviation
Administration and 10 with the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. Her last eight years with the bureau were spent
negotiating land allotment programs for Native Alas
kans. ' During an executive trainee program with the bureau
in 1989, she was assigned to a two week detail with the
National Park Service in Denver. She impressed the
park service regional director, Lorraine Mintzmeycr,
who hired her for the job, but adds, "I hired her for her
ability."
Ms. Booher is working with outside museum curators
and historians to update and enhance the museum's
exhibits. Sixteen of the exhibits focus on the cavalry and
eight on the Indians; she would like to see that more
balanced. This summer, for one of the battlefield tours,
she hired a Native American guide who provided
additional information on the life and customs of the
Plains Indians.
She also has picked a fight with the museum associa
tion by asking it - unsuccessfully - to sell the controver
sial book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," which is
prone to the Indian perspective, at the park's bookstore.
There's not much Ms. Booher does that hasn't caught
the watchful evye of one critic or another. She has been
criticized, for instance, for hiring more Indians to work
at the park. Recently, she received a congressional
inquiry after a constituent complained, "she is letting
weeds grow up there", on Last Stand Hill.
That is true, but the weeds haye always grown wild
because the park service maintains the hill in its natural
state. "I haven't figured out who's fault the weeds were
for the first 113 years," says Ms. Booher. "But this year,
it's my fault."
The superintendent has her share of supporters. At
the park service, supervisors laud her work. And
Democratic Rep. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colo
rado, whose ancestors fought Mr. Custer in the battle,
.says that, "if these people who are out to get Barbara try
to remove her, they're going to see another Indian
uprising right here in my office." He says Ms.
Booher's leadership is needed to "bury the old-boy sys
tem" at the battle field.
Area Indian Tribes, even rival bands that hold long
standing grudges against one another, have joined to
support the Indian memorial and Ms. Boohcr. "We feel
blessed to have Barbara," says Austin Two Moons, one
of 10 members of a committee established by the
National Park Service to help select a site and design for
the proposed memorial.
The proposal for the memorial would place it 300 yards
from the existing monument. A nationwide competition
would be held to select a design. Legislation authorizing
the memorial and its $2 million cleared the House two
weeks ago without dissent. But the proposed amend
ment to change the park's name to the Little Bighorn
National Monument could trigger extensive debate and
delay Senate passage.
Many Custer supporters, like Mr. Wells, say they
wouldn't mind the Indian memorial if it were farther
away from the cavalry monument and not publicly
funded. But even Mr. Wells says all of the controversy is
strangely appropriate for the publicity hungry George
Armstrong Custer. "Custer will always attract people
and cause arguments," says Mr. Wells. "With all the
attention he still gets, George has got to be smiling in his
grave."
Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal
Giago Wants To Try
National Paper Again
Lakota Times publisher Tim Giago wants to start a
national network of Indian-owned newspapers using his
own paper as a training center, Giago said in a Times
story this week.
"The lessons we learned with our attempted expansion
into Chippewa country a few years back have not been
lost to us," Giago said.
"We went in undercapitalized and , in reality, under
prepared, but that is how one learns in this touchy field
of business."
In 1987, Giago announced plans to open a Sioux Falls
plant to print a chain of weekly newspapers for Indian
reservations, along with plans to start a weekly on the
Red Lake Chippewa Reservation near Bcmidji, Minn.
The printing plant was never built. The newspaper
folded in 1988 after printing 48 issues.
This time, Giago hopes to be better prepared.
He will enroll in advanced business courses at Harvard
while on a one-year Nciman Fellowship that begins this
American Publishing, Inc., the parent corpora
tion of the Lakota Times, will be restructured with an
eye to national expansion next spring, the Times story
said.
As a part of the plan, the stock options of the company
will be changed in order to offer shares for sale to a
limited number of private investors, the story said.
Standing members of the board of Native American
Publishing are Giago, president, and Gerald Garcia,
publisher of the Knoxville, Tenn., Journal, vice presi
dent. Garcia bought 39 percent of the stock in the
Lakota Times several years ago.
Three vice presidents were elected to the board earlier
this month. Margaret Clark-Price is associate editor of
Native Peoples Magazine of Phoenix, Ariz. Jonathan
Walker is financial consultant for that magazine.
Amanda War Bonnctt is a manager at Lakota Times.
Two other managers at the Times, Rosemary Langer
man and Theresa Thompson, were elected treasurer and
secretary.
-Courtesy of the Sho-Ban News