1 of 5. The granite face carved almost 90 foot tall pairs of Crazy Horse down about what will be the extended left arm and hand on the mountain carving in progress in the Black Hills of South Dakota, June 2, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Pat Dobbs/Crazy Horse/HandoutBy Greg McCune

CUSTER, South Dakota | Mon Sep 5, 2011 5:40 pm EDT

CUSTER, South Dakota (Reuters)-almost every morning for more than half a century, 85-year-old Ruth Ziolkowski rises near dawn, places his feet on the floor and gives thanks, she is part of a dream.

Since 1947, she has worked on the monument to native Americans in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where she is spearheading the effort to literally move a mountain Crazy Horse.

Ziolkowski, President nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, "I'm tickled to death to get up every morning and go to work," said in an interview this summer.

Billed as the world's largest sculpture, Crazy Horse is only one drive 20 miles from the better known Mount Rushmore, where the faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt are carved in granite.

A few miles later is the Pine Ridge reservation, a mainly arid land where more than half of residents living below the poverty line, according to government data.

Pine Ridge is where the Oglala Sioux tribe of many Indians of the Crazy Horse were placed after they were persecuted by the army of the United States, thirsty Buffalo they hunted, and had confiscated from their traditional lands.

RIVALS RUSHMORE

Unfortunate that a monument to the white leaders was carved into mountains that the Sioux considered sacred, Lakota Sioux Chief Henry standing bear's eldest invited to Pine Ridge Korczak Ziolkowski, who, in 1939, he won the Prix de sculpture world's fair in New York.

They decided to sculpt a monument to rival native Americans with Crazy Horse, a Sioux warrior who helped lead one of the most famous Indian victories over the army of the United States-annihilating much of Seventh Cavalry of General George Armstrong Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

Korczak Ziolkowski began working in granite mountain along with volunteers, including young Ruth Ross, of Connecticut. Korczak and Ruth were married in 1950 and 10 children at the feet of Crazy Horse.

"He felt that they (the Indians) have made a terrible mistake and he wanted to right some of that wrong," she said.

Many people thought was Korczak plan really crazy.

Mount Rushmore took 14 years to complete, cost $ 1 million at the time of which 85 per cent was the Government's money and used about 400 workers, according to the National Park Service.

Stubbornly independent, Korczak accepted only private donations. He sketched out a monument far greater than the Mount Rushmore, the warrior on horseback and hand stretched out.

All four presidential heads of Mount Rushmore would fit within just a warrior head at the Crazy Horse, said Pat Dobbs, spokesman for the monument. Korczak also wanted to carve completely around the mountain, while faces of Presidents are only on one side of Mount Rushmore.

NATIVE AMERICAN OPPOSITION

Some native Americans against the project. They said that Henry Standing Bear had no authority to invite a white man to carve the monument and said it was the Black Hills by using profanity and explore an Indian hero. They said that Crazy Horse, described in the history books as a quiet man, would not have approved.

Indian activist Russell means said Crazy Horse sculpture was like going to the Holy Land of Israel and sculpture on Mount Zion. "It is an insult to our whole being." he said in 2001.

Korczak worked almost alone on the mountain for years and died in 1982, 16 years before the first part of the sculpture-the giant face of Crazy Horse-was completed in 1998.

Until today the horse and hand stretched from Crazy Horse are only in rough shape. Plans are complete horse head then while Ruth was careful to not give a date of completion.

If the unfinished Crazy Horse is a monument to pure persistence or futility absolute, the project has expanded, with a visitor center, including a Museum, restaurant and gift shop and numerous events. A fundraising drive begun in 2006 compensated $ 19.3 million by the end of 2010, including in-kind donations.

About a million people trek to Crazy Horse, every year and the entry fees account for 40 percent of the revenues with the rest of giving particular, Dobbs said. On some days tourists can view an explosion of dynamite as mountain explode continues.

EMPHASIS ON EDUCATION

But the most important change was the emphasis on indigenous education. Ruth said that her husband always dreamed that an indigenous University in North America would be on the site.

It was built a dormitory, and from summer 2010, Crazy Horse provided a program for native American students, some of them, to work in the tourist centre and take classes such as math and writing in preparation for College.

One of the students, Dylan Tymes, who grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation, said he is waiting to begin their second year of college soon. TYMES said that Pine Ridge is a rough place, a "ghetto", with few jobs and many people living on food stamps.

TYMES said even some of his own family members were skeptical of the Crazy Horse memorial, but the design work and education summer he won. "If it weren't for the Crazy Horse program, I didn't think I would even be in College now," he said.

Some prominent native Americans also are joining with the Ziolkowski family for help. Five of 26 Council administration Foundation are native American heritage.

Billy Mills, a Lakota Sioux, that project and, in 1964, became the only American to win the Olympic 10,000-meter run, said that the Warrior Crazy Horse was one of his childhood idols. After Mills's mother died when he was a boy, his father spoke of crazy horse to calm the anger of the child and raise him worth self said Mills destroys many Indians.

Mills doesn't believe Crazy Horse would be annoyed about the mountain sculpture if he were alive, but it would be "use it as an opportunity to teach the world about indigenous peoples."

Ruth Ziolkowski is fine with the fact that she will not see that Crazy Horse finished in your life. But his nine children, of which two are on the Foundation Board and a third a foreman on the mountain directing work, she has a clear desire.

"If this project stop because I die, my life has been wasted," she said.

(Additional reporting by Eric Johnson; Edited by Jerry Norton, Mary Wisniewski and Peter Bohan)

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