Design Chosen For Memorial At Little Bighorn Battlefield

A Philadelphia designer and his wife were announced Monday as winners of a national competition to create a memorial at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in southeastern Montana.

John R. Collins and Alison J. Towers will receive $30,000 for creating the winning design. Collins said he’d never been to the battlefield.

The $15,000 second prize went to Richard Alan Borkovetz of Albuquerque, N.M. Robert Lundgren of Philadelphia won the $5,000 third prize.

Six honorable mentions included an entry by Michael Stewart of Crow Agency, the only Montanan to win an award.

Drum groups from the Crow, Arapaho and Yankton Sioux tribes sang their flag songs as Crow elder Ben Pease blessed the winning entries, fanning smoke from sage and sweet grass over them with eagle feathers. Pease’s grandfather, White Man Runs Him, served as a scout for Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in the 1876 battle.

The winning design features an open circle surrounded by an earthen berm meant to recall ancient earthworks. Two-dimensional bronze sculptures of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors stand at one end. According to the design statement, two large wooden posts straddle a “weeping wound or cut” and form a “spirit gate” intended to “symbolize the mutual understanding of the infinite all the dead possess.”

Collins, 33, said in a telephone interview Monday night that the design was intended to make “large gestures” with some features left deliberately ambiguous. For example, the design includes narratives, crafts, artifacts, offerings, rock carvings and pictographs that would be selected by tribal members to increase the memorial’s meaning for them.

Speakers said selection of the winning design moved the nation a step closer to recognizing the warriors who fought at the Little Bighorn.

“This is probably 121 years overdue, and we’re still not there yet,” said Gerard Baker, battlefield superintendent.

Robert Burley, a Vermont architect who supervised the work of the seven-member jury that picked the winners, said the design by Collins and Towers emerged as a fairly clear winner among the 550 entries.

Carol Redcherries, a Northern Cheyenne who served on the jury, said the memorial would finally pay tribute to the winners of the battle, who fought to protect their freedom.

“Today we can be content that they’re going to be honored and remembered,” she said.