Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

Earlier this year we ran a story by former Park Service historian Richard West Sellars that examined how fully the National Park Service at Fort Laramie National Historic Site recounts the history of the 19th Century Indian Wars. The following article from Robert Pahre takes a broader look at how the National Park Service interprets Native American history.

The battle popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand," and now also recognized as the last stand of the Plains Indians, was fought in southeastern Montana on June 25-26, 1876. Here are some highlight statistics for Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and the battle it commemorates.

Across its sprawling system, the National Park Service is noticeably short of adequate museum display space and curatorial facilities. But the agency has a plan to address that.

Sometime this summer a truck, or trucks, loaded with artifacts and papers at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana, will be sent south all the way to Tucson, Arizona, a journey designed for safekeeping until the monument can build a proper curatorial facility.

How can Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument better interpret the history it seeks to preserve? That's a relatively simple question, but one not so easily answered.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument offers a prime example of re-imaging in NPS context. Custer’s Last Stand occurred at this place, but so did the last stand of the Plains Indians. In 1991, a landmark redesignation acknowledged that the battlefield has a duel identity. More recently, an Indian Memorial has helped to re-image the place as hallowed ground for Indians as well as whites.

In an about-face, National Park Service officials have admitted they erred in pushing an expansion of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument visitor center and are reversing course. "Sometimes you just have to admit that you didn't do your homework as well as you might have thought," says Intermountain Regional Director Mike Snyder.

A group of former National Park Service chief historians and park superintendents are plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Thursday to block expansion of the visitor center at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. At stake, they say, is the historic integrity of the monument.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and Pu'uhonau o Honaunau National Historical Park both celebrate birthdays in July. These two parks were renamed for cultural-political reasons, underscoring the importance of labels and the need to respect native peoples.