annual report
2023
Striding forward in Liberation
Letter from the Executive Director:
In 2023, I completed my fifth year as Executive Director here at Thunder Valley. In our 2018 Strategic Planning sessions we set very high goals for our organization, and I am especially proud of our work to improve the financial health of the organization.
We have established a general operating reserve fund, developed a board-approved investment strategy and, with the help of a 1:1 matching fund grant from our long-standing partners at the Kendeda Fund, we have built a reserve fund of over 1.6 million dollars. This fund is equal to half our annual operating costs, and insulates our timely and essential work from the uncertainties of funding cycles.
With this financial stability as our foundation, we built a Lifeways and Wellness Equity team to serve as the unifying structure for our staff and our community. Sharing our traditional teachings, ceremonies and values, they are making healing pathways more visible and more accessible to our staff and community. With their expertise, we are developing a varied array of intentional healing strategies for Lakota youth and families across Oglala Territory.
As we walk into 2024, I am proud to share that we are deeply rooted in our Lakhol Wichohan (our Lakota Lifeways), on a firm financial footing and carry a brave vision for our collective future. Please read on to learn about the liberatory work of our 8 Initiatives last year, and the ways that work is rippling through our community and planting seeds of hope and liberation for the next generations.
Wopila thanka (thank you) for your joining us on this journey of healing, hope and liberation!
Tatewin Means, JD
Executive Director
True freedom is the freedom to be responsible.
-Russell Means
Housing & Homeownership
We are very excited to see the second circle of single-family homes fill with families, the spaces between offering children places to play and the homes themselves serving as spaces where generations can connect with one another. Though currently without staff, our Housing & Homeownership Initiative’s mission, to provide our people with the tools and opportunity to build community wealth through asset building, continues to show in our work. In 2023 we sold two more homes, referring potential buyers to credit coaching and financial literacy programs at Lakota Funds and Mazaska, two locally led lending institutions.
Last year, we were able to fully satisfy our loan commitments to the housing investors, which is a tremendous step forward giving us the freedom to serve our community members in innovative ways. With this step, we are no longer bound to the conventional mortgage home purchase model. We are considering leasing some houses and selling one to a school for their staff housing. In community work it is essential to have the flexibility to meet our people where they are on their healing journeys.
Housing & Homeownership MILESTONES:
Regenerative Community Development
At the end of 2021, we purchased a property in Whiteclay with a big vision: We are changing the narrative of Whiteclay, replacing a site of oppression with a starting point on the pathway of healing, hope and liberation. In 2023, we started community engagements with our most vulnerable populations to ensure that we are responsive to their needs and understanding of their experiences. We hosted multiple sessions at the Adult Offenders Facility, the primary correctional facility in the Pine Ridge Reservation. These sessions were conducted with both the female and the male populations, as well as other stakeholders we will collaborate with for the design, construction and running of this one-of-a-kind healing community.
During the sessions, it was really apparent how much people appreciated being asked what they needed to succeed. People were eager to share their thoughts and open up about their experiences. One of the most consistent things they mentioned was that they wanted a mentor or coach to help them stay on track and connect with our Lakota identity, whether they had never been close to our lifeways or were hoping to reconnect. As we work on designing this facility and these spaces, we know that the most important thing will be the people who fill them.
Regenerative Community Development MILESTONES:
Social Enterprise
In 2023, we ran two full courses of the CO.STARTERS Business Accelerator program, with help from Startup Sioux Falls. This program is a way to provide structure and support to the passionate and energetic entrepreneurs in our community. In the Pine Ridge Reservation, as in many other Indigenous communities, our economy sees a lot of leakage: money earned here is most often spent somewhere else. This initiative works to change that by creating community wealth through business development grounded in Lakota knowledge and values, thereby increasing access to education and entrepreneurial opportunities on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Our two cohorts graduated four participants, and helped around a dozen more get started thinking about the practicalities of their start-ups. The ten-week course is a large time commitment, and we are looking at alternative ways to provide useful training to our community. The ideas of this year’s graduates ranged from food trucks to substance abuse counseling to traditional herbs and medicine. Through the courses, graduates developed business plans and break-even analysis. These tools, coupled with ongoing support ranging from office space to assistance with tax filings, help nourish the enterprising energy of our community members.
Social Enterprise MILESTONES:
Food Sovereignty
In the second quarter of 2023, Thunder Valley secured a lease for a 40,000-acre range unit in the Badlands. The beautiful formations have served as protection for our people when evading invaders, and are full of history. They are part of our home and one that has been hurting for generations. The near eradication of the buffalo by the United States military and settlers has left the ecosystems without its keystone species, our relatives the Pte Oyate.
This lease from the National Parks Service will be the land on which we open our O'onakižin (Stronghold) Bison Range to raise our buffalo herd and demonstrate not only the ecological benefits of the buffalo in their natural habitat, but also those of Indigenous land under Indigenous care. Over 80% of the biodiversity remaining on our planet is in lands still maintained by their Indigenous populations. By bringing buffalo back to the Badlands, we will heal ourselves, the land and the buffalo together through the relationships that have always sustained our people. In preparation, our staff have visited three buffalo operations run by three different types of entities: one run by tribal government, one by tribal members, and one run by a private, non-Indigenous philanthropist. These different approaches are helping as we develop guidelines for our restorative operation.
Food Sovereignty MILESTONES:
Regional Equity
Through the work of our Women’s Equity Movement and its Winyan Kin Wakanpi efforts, we expanded our work for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Awareness week, with the main events being held on May 5. After a week of varied activities to raise consciousness and recognition about this epidemic of violence, we invited families who have lost loved ones to place a handprint and the name of lost relatives on a tipi. At night, we lit the tipi in red. Tipis are our traditional homes, and lighting it red as a beacon shows that we have not forgotten our relatives. It also calls out to other groups and individuals doing work to prevent this violence to join together.
Our work continued throughout the year, and saw 8 community members along with our Workforce Development Cohort participate in both search and rescue and CPR/first aid training to better care for relatives. We are also proactively building a network across all the districts of the Reservation so we can call our people home into the community, provide resources before people go missing, and change policy to improve the tribal response.
Regional Equity MILESTONES:
Youth Leadership Development
Last year we launched our boys’ society, which is meant to give participants the social, emotional and spiritual tools to become good relatives and good leaders. Initially, we planned to run the program for elementary-aged youth 10 years and older, but it quickly became clear that the program resonated better with the high school-aged participants. We were able to adapt quickly and refocus on the teachings appropriate to that age group.
Utilizing a mentorship model, we provide regular and consistent safe spaces for youths to connect with adults and their peers. In these spaces, young leaders are free to learn and grow into their identity as Lakota, to be comfortable with who they are and supported as they decide who they want to become. Starting in June, many of the boys were reluctant to express themselves in prayer or by singing, but by the end of the year every participant was singing and expressing themself freely.
Youth Leadership Development MILESTONES:
Workforce Development
In 2023 our team ran its 8th Cohort of the Workforce Development program. We began with ten participants in March, and 3 graduated from the program in December: Russ, Taylence and Tayton. As in previous years, cohort members received over a thousand hours of training in construction skills as well as social, emotional and spiritual teachings. The Mission of the Workforce Development Program is that, through the determination of young adults and the dedication of our local leaders, we are building a thriving workforce centered on improving financial, emotional, physical, and professional health while creating sustainable communities in Lakota Country.
This program is centered on the ethos of service, and we were proud this year to have our participants learn by serving our Hocoka, our spiritual community. In the summer heat, participants remodeled the cook shack for our Sun Dance. They redid the siding, external fixtures and shelving inside. This project was completed in around three weeks, and will continue to be helpful to the Hocoka for years. Through training and mentorship, these young adults have new tools for finding ways to help in our community.
Workforce Development MILESTONES:
Lakota Language & Education
This year, we served 46 students, ranging from 12 months to 9 years old across our Thunder Valley, Porcupine and Pine Ridge Immersion Montessori locations. In June the entirety of Thunder Valley came together to honor all these children and their families in our annual Child Honoring ceremony. Workforce Development cohort members built an arbor to shade our relatives in the ceremony and witnessed firsthand the use of what they built. We have honored our children for years, but this year we were excited to host the ceremony outside in the kind of arbor that’s used for Powwows, Sun Dance, and the other ceremonies that take place under the summer sun.
The arbor represents the Changleska (medicine wheel) which is our way of life. Our children stood in the center of that wheel, with our sacred foods to be honored and recognized in their relationship to the land and food which both nourish them. Community members and families joined in the ceremony and everyone who attended walked away with a gift. In the years to come, we hope to expand this honoring ceremony even further, including grass dances beforehand to bless the ground and social dancing into the night.
Lakota Language & Education MILESTONES:
And take a look at our previous Annual Reports:
Annual Report 2014
Annual Report 2017
Annual Report 2018
Annual Report 2020