The most impressive part of the Crazy Horse monument is the fact that the entire operation is privately funded. The founder, Korczak Kiolkowski was asked by the Sioux to sclupt a monument to Crazy Horse. He was so moved by Crazy Horse's story that he decided this monument should be the biggest in the world. And it will be.
Kiolkowski was a promotor of free enterprise, believing that if he accepted governmental support for the project, it would flounder and fail. Instead, the $27 we paid as a carload and the money we spent at the gift shops fund the entire mighty project.
I wonder if our boys' children will even whitness its completion, as the project is slow and cumbersome. But they have made bigger strides in the last several years and the exhibit is a beautiful one. It includes the house of the family (with 10 chilren), original sculptures from Kiolkowski (including Ray Crock, a friend of his), an area for native artists to ssell their wares and a restaurant and gift shop.
The boys really liked learning about how the dynamite blew away fragments of the sclupture. For a donation, they each got to bring home a rock from the site (great example of free enterprise!). We all loved the message it left us with: anything is possible if you set a goal and work towareds it.
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