The Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who died defending their village had no markers, no names on the monument’s official rolls, no formal recognition within the space.

Lakota and Cheyenne people and their allies pushed for decades to change this.

The argument was both historical and moral: the existing monument told only one side of a story, and it told that story from the perspective of the military force that had invaded territory that U.S. treaty obligations guaranteed to the Lakota.

In 1991, Congress passed legislation renaming the site the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument — the name “Custer Battlefield” finally gone — and authorizing construction of an Indian Memorial on the site.

That memorial, completed in 2003, sits near the spot where Custer’s men made their last stand.