The Memorial As Displacement

The Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills occupies an interesting position relative to the burial mystery.

The memorial’s location — in the Black Hills, in the country that is sacred to the Lakota, on land that is part of the ongoing territorial dispute — means that it is both in the right general cultural geography and potentially in the wrong specific place.

His birth name — Cha-O-Ha, “Among the Trees” — may connect to a specific landscape.