CHILDREN'S MEMORIAL BOULDERS
Boulders Hand Carved with the Names of each Child (50): ($1,000 each plus labor = $75,000) An individual boulder will be hand engraved with the name of each of the over fifty (50) children that passed away at the Rapid City Indian Boarding School (that have been identified thus far). The boulders are symbolic as rocks (inyan) are sacred in Lakota culture, they represent the “grandfathers” and are central in the inipi/sweat lodge cleansing ceremony. By using individual boulders, we will also be able to add more children as more of the names are identified in the future. Each boulder will be placed alongside the walking path at the top of the memorial. These boulders honor the lives of the children that were lost and the graves that were not found.
We have developed a relationship with world renowned hand stone carver Masayuki Nagare (http://www.mnagase.com/) who has graciously agreed to teach our young Lakota artists the lost art of hand carving granite stone, so that each child who passed will have a Lakota youth participate in memorializing them.
The elders and youth will travel to North Dakota to hand pick all 50 granite stones from where the glaciers rolled them.
An example similar to the final product. Each stone will be carved with the child’s name, age, date of death, and tribe.
