Moving Robe Woman’s story is one piece of the correction that historians, tribal scholars, and cultural institutions have been working on for decades: the restoration of Indigenous voices to a battle that those voices won, and to a history that those voices have always been part of.

The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument’s 1991 renaming and 2003 Indian Memorial represent official acknowledgment that this correction is overdue and necessary.

The growing body of scholarship that centers Lakota and Cheyenne perspectives — drawing on tribal oral traditions, recorded testimony, and the work of Indigenous historians — represents the academic dimension of the same correction.

Moving Robe Woman’s story — a Lakota woman who rode into the battle after her brother was killed, who survived the victory and everything that followed, who gave testimony that has been preserved in the historical record — is a lens through which the entire event can be seen differently.

Seen through her eyes, Little Bighorn is not primarily a story about Custer.