NDN Collective shares more of their resources to help build community

NORTH RAPID CITY – Pejuta Waste O’Tipi Good Medicine Lodge was presented with a $50,000 dollar check from NDN Collective’s President and Partnerships Fund on Wednesday. A group of supporters, employees and those helped by the organization gathered on the lawn of the Good Medicine Lodge at the Woyatan Lutheran Church to give thanks and share a meal.

NDN Collective Director of Community Engagement Murray Lee said the grant, which is coming from NDN Collective’s President and Partnerships fund, goes toward supporting community-based strategies like mutual aid and direct support in the form of food, warmth, and sanctuary from the elements for unsheltered/unhoused relatives. He the money helped them over the winter.

Last winter was an especially tough time for this population after the Hope Center closed during the holiday season just as the harshest elements of winter were expected.

Tarren Red Owl who helps to oversee things said the grant helped keep people together. “It brought a lot of people in the community together, to eat, have fun and relax. This check really helped us out throughout the winter and continues to help us. I would really like to thank to NDN Collective for helping us.”

Clay White Eagle, who drives the bus and helps oversee things said, “It really helped us out throughout this past winter. It saved a lot of lives. We served about 500 meals a day.”

NDN Collective President and CEO Nick Tilsen said that the Good Medicine Lodge’s work helps the people and helps the community. “We’re honored to support Good Medicine Lodge and work that happens here. In Rapid City, here, this is our homelands and a lot of our people that are unsheltered are mistreated here in the community. They are mistreated by the police and mistreated by the system. This project is an example of our people helping one another. Being Wolakota and supporting one another, to keep our own community safe, to feed our own people, to house our own people. There’s a lot of good work that happens at this place. In addition to the resources, many of us at different times volunteer to support this place too. Because it’s in our hearts to help our people and to have that compassion. Many times, in this community, when it comes to the unsheltered, right away they try to make it about PR, they try to make it about politics, but it’s really about people. It’s about having compassion and love for one another. No matter what struggle our people are in. So NDN Collective is honored to support Good Medicine Lodge to help to feed the people and house the people. It’s really so simple but is an example of when we come together as a community, we can really create solutions. But it takes hard work and commitment.”

Tilsen then asked for a round of applause for all the workers and all the good work they do. “It’s selfless work.”

He said that NDN Collective will continue to support in this way. “To share the resources that we have in our grants. We believe in the mission of the work, and we see it. This check means food. It means we can keep the lights on in this place. It means the basic things that we have here and it’s us as Lakota people helping one another. We see all of this work as an extension of us being Lakota.”

You can visit the Pejuta O’Tipi Waste Good Medicine Lodge website. Click on the three bars on the upper right and you can see a list of the resources offered: housing resources, emergency assistance rental and mortgage assistance.

(Contact Marnie Cook at cookm8715@yahoo.com)

 

 

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