It didn't provoke the same level of existential angst, but I am of a different generation. Who knew there was a Starbucks there! I would have killed for some decent coffee on the long stretch between Madison, WI and Washington state.
I could go there, and wallow in my own shame and guilt, at the horrors my ancestors wrought. But what does that do for anyone?
Wounded Knee is the scene of a gratuitous massacre of over 290 desperate native Americans in the dead of winter ostensibly to suppress an utterly harmless messianic ghost dance cult. Freedom of religion didn't apply in this case. All this occurred two weeks after the brutal butchering of Sitting Bull.
I 90 conveniently takes tourists to that vast amusement park called the Black Hills where families can entertain the kids and indulge in self-congratulatory patriotism at Mt. Rushmore. For the slightly less shallow there is also a monument to Crazy Horse, eternally unfinished. Although commissioned by the Oglalas it is in perfect New Order style, a conquerer's tip of the hat to a noble savage.
As far as I'm concerned the only monument to Crazy Horse is the wind, the lightening, the extraordinary world he embodied.
