For most of the monument’s history, there was no equivalent commemoration of the Lakota and Cheyenne.

Their fallen were not marked.

Their perspective was not represented.

The interpretive materials available to visitors told the story of Custer’s Last Stand, not the story of the defense of the camp.

The legislative changes of 1991 — the renaming and the authorization of the Indian Memorial — began to change this.

The Indian Memorial’s completion in 2003 created a physical space at the battlefield where the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho perspective was acknowledged and honored.

The memorial includes a spirit gate — an opening through which the visitor is understood to be looking into the spirit world, acknowledging the dead on both sides — and textual acknowledgments of the Indigenous people who fought and died there.