Law firm helps to bring Santa Claus to Lakota Youth on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation

The Wo Otuh’an Wi Toy Drive serves more than 1,700 Lakota children in South Dakota on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.

LOUISVILLE, CO — Each year, the attorneys and staff at Fredericks Peebles & Patterson LLP in Louisville, Colorado, join forces with the nonprofit Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, to help bring Santa Claus to the remote Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. Through the annual Wo Otúh’an Wi Toy Drive (the name means “Moon of Giving Away Presents”), this herculean undertaking serves more than 1,700 Lakota youth in 20 communities across the 2.8-million-acre reservation.
This fall, the FPP team in Louisville adopted approximately 40 “Dear Santa” letters from Cheyenne River, and they ensured that each child would receive several gifts from his or her deeply personal Christmas list. On Dec. 11, they helped load a rental truck bound for distant Eagle Butte, where an army of CRYP staff and volunteers were waiting at what has become a 24-7 Santa’s Workshop.
“This is an important project for us each year,” aide Jeremy Patterson, Fredericks Peebles & Patterson attorney and spokesperson. “The Cheyenne River Youth Project is a grassroots organization—by Cheyenne River, for Cheyenne River—and it’s now serving its second generation of Lakota children. The CRYP team has been working tirelessly for three decades to make sure that their kids get to experience the magic of the holidays, and to ease the burden at least a bit on their parents and care-givers. We’re proud to be part of it.”
The Wo Otúh’an Wi Toy Drive is unique among its contemporaries, because it is really about making dreams come true. Instead of assigning gifts to genders and ages, CRYP has remained committed to keeping its toy drive personal; the children share their own precious wishes in their “Dear Santa” letters, and CRYP guarantees that the gifts they receive will be addressed to them personally.
“When the kids open their gifts and see that Santa has fulfilled some of their wishes, they experience the true magic of the holiday season,” Patterson said. “All children, everywhere, should feel the hope and joy that comes with it. And, we hope they also will feel how loved and treasured they are.”
One of the country’s only majority native-owned law firms, Fredericks Peebles & Patterson has offices in Sacramento, California; Louisville, Colorado; Rapid City, South Dakota; and Washington, DC. To learn more, visit www.ndnlaw.com.

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