Public Law 102-201, signed by President George Bush on December 10, 1991, renamed Custer Battlefield National Monument in Montana as Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and called for the design and construction of a living memorial and monument to recognize the Indians who fought, on either side, to preserve their land and culture in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, fought on June 25-26, 1876. The memorial will be on high ground overlooking the Little Bighorn River with distant views of the Big Horn Mountains. An area of approximately 3,000 square feet at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument has been designated as the site of the memorial. These rolling grasslands directly north of the 7th Cavalry Monument atop Last Stand Hill are a historically significant resource. In accordance with the Public Law, "[t]he design criteria shall include but not necessarily be limited to compatibility with the monument and its resources in form and scale, sensitivity to the history being portrayed, and artistic merit."
A committee appointed by the Secretary of the Interior has further declared that the design should foster PEACE THROUGH UNITY based on the words of Oglala Elder Enos Poor Bear in 1989. "If this memorial is to serve its total purpose," he said, "it must not only be a tribute to the dead; it must contain a message for the living. We strongly suggest to you that power through unity would serve us well."
The Monument memorializes one of the last armed efforts of the Northern Plains Indians to preserve their ancestral way of life. In the battle in the valley of the Little Bighorn River, 262 soldiers and attached personnel of the U.S. Army, including Crow and Arikara scouts, were defeated at the hands of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe.