Pop quiz. If I say Custer’s, you say…”Last Stand,” right? What was Custer’s Last Stand? “It had something to do with fighting the Indians out West.” Right again. And who won? George Armstrong Custer’s name is forever linked to the battle on the banks of the Little Bighorn River, but it was a decisive victory for Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the warriors of the Lakota, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations who combined forces to stop the U.S. Army’s invasion of their sovereign territory.
Custer and all of his men died that day. A white marble monument marks their mass grave. But for 127 years, there’s been no official memorial to the Indians who died there too. That changes tomorrow. Recasting Little Bighorn in the American memory.
Guests:
Barbara Sutteer, Tribal Liaison for the Dedication of the Indian Memorial at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, Crow Agency, Montana
Edward Linenthal, Professor of Religion and American Culture, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and author, “Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields”
Paul Andrew Hutton, Professor of History, University of New Mexico, author, “The Custer Reader.”