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Native American Day students called to warrior roles

OLC instructor named Crazy Horse Educator of the Year

CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL – Twenty years ago, Gov. George Mickelson and tribal leaders in South Dakota mapped out a challenge in establishing the “Year of Reconciliation.” It’s time, he said in 1990, to turn to the future together and “teach others that we can change attitudes.”

Speakers at Monday’s 20th Native Americans’ Day program at Crazy Horse Memorial sought to enlist students in helping to make those changes.

Those who succeed will be the new warriors, Mount Rushmore National Memorial Superintendent Gerard Baker told the packed house in the memorial’s Mountain View conference center. At more than 200 pupils registered, students were by far the largest group in the standing-room-only crowd.

Some got to dance with Native American youth from Rapid City and Chamberlain while the Eagle Valley Singers drum group of Rapid City performed. Oglala Sioux Tribe Fifth Member Myron Pourier, world champion hoop dancer Jasmine Pickner of Rapid City and the newly crowned Miss He Sapa Win (Miss Black Hills Pow Wow) Sunni Wilkinson, a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes from White Shield, N.D., also were featured.

A Mandan-Hidasta member of the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota, Baker said males and females need to assume warrior-like leadership roles because our society and freedoms are threatened by enemies from outside and within. One threat is racism.

Baker put students on their warrior quest with several assignments. Their research begins, he said, with getting adults in their families to answer, “Who are We?” Knowing their background, Baker said, is a vital building block for the students in deciding who they will be.

It won’t be a one-time dinner table talk. He also said they will need to:

-- Turn off their TVs and computers at night and talk with their families.

-- At least once daily stop and listen to nature and its messages from the Creator.

-- Respect their natural surroundings, others and themselves, shunning bad habits and words – and questioning others when they do or say something harmful to themselves or others.

-- Say one good thing to at least one person every day, especially someone they are having difficulty with.

“That’s a sign of a good warrior,” Baker said.

They will win the fight when he, as an elder, will ask about prejudice and racism and no one will know the answer. “It’s up to you, your generation, to make that turn.”

Baker is the first Native American superintendent at Mount Rushmore, and throughout his nearly 30-year National Parks Service career he has been an agent for change, seeking to include the Native American perspective to tell the more complex – and complete – story of our shared national heritage.

He said one of the people he looked up to in college was Marcel Bull Bear. “He was always doing something good,” Baker recalled of their time at Mary College in North Dakota.

Bull Bear, now an instructor at Oglala Lakota College at Kyle on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was named the seventh Crazy Horse Educator of the Year. His nominator, school development director Marilyn Pourier, said he was a “great leader and a great role model.”

The honor comes with a $1,000 stipend, and the surprised Bull Bear already had plans for how the money will help his students. He teaches history, family genealogy research and cultural classes, which he will tie together in archery lessons and field trips, thanks to the grant.

“Now I have some money to bring my students to the sacred places in the Black Hills,” he said.

The power of place is important in the Lakota culture, and Bull Bear joined Baker in challenging the students to take care of themselves and their world.

“There is no way around it, we have to do that for us to survive in the future,” he said.

Education is key in the reconciliation effort and the cornerstone of programs at Crazy Horse Memorial. The mountain carving produced another 750-ton blast in the horse’s head area for the holiday crowd, but out of sight is a key development.

A university and medical training center are in the memorial’s mission, and Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation director Jack Marsh said the school is no longer just a dream.

"From this day forward we will no longer talk abstractly about the university,” he said.

Thanks to a $2.5 million gift from philanthropist T. Denny Sanford of Sioux Falls and a $5 million permanent endowment being established by Donna “Muffy” Christen of Huron, a ceremonial groundbreaking recently started the memorial’s first university student living-learning center.

 Marsh said the 40-unit complex will include four classrooms. It will be completed next year and a satellite campus operation of the University of South Dakota will be in full swing by 2011. The memorial will provide jobs to students and scholarships to qualified Native Americans.

“Together, we are advancing reconciliation,” Marsh said.