Indigenous Cultural Identity Development

Problem: In the Rapid City Area School system - Rapid City Central High School, the dropout rate for Indigenous students is approximately 75 percent from their freshman to senior year. Unfortunately, with underprivileged and marginalized conditioned behavior, families face surmountable barriers to actively engaging. Adults in the families are lacking the same background as the teachers, which lead to mutual misinterpretation, to make things worse the language is not the same level. This leads to substance abuse addiction, consequential juvenile detention and prison pipeline systemic data checkmark. 

Solution: In person healing group and individual sessions help youth, adults, and families reconnect Indigenous cultural identity. Initial orientation to language, ceremony protocol, kinship etiquette, and understanding the level of behavior development while maintaining in a poverty level environment. 1)    Connect school administrators, teachers, and parents building respectable relationships through communication and respect to culture and education.

2)    Consistent training for school board members and entire school staff – Maintenance to Superintendent.

3)    Educating parents/guardians/grandparents to understand the colonialism/acculturation historical and inter-generational trauma is genetic passed.

4)    Reconnect inherent values through identity development therapy and ceremony.

5)    We provide 12-week healing sessions with 6 traditional ceremonies for our relatives (clients), engaging students, parents, and teachers in weekly meeting with resources for homework tutoring, food, transportation, housing, financial literacy, workforce development, and independent living skill classes.

The target population we working directly and meaningful to improve, are our Indigenous youth. they are currently underserved in education, school activities, community events, and decent home-life. The majority are poverty level and single parent families, which has been normalized the last 30 years due to an increase alcohol and drug addiction. The solution will address their needs. The current systematic services are not adequate for our inherent Indigenous lifestyle. Our therapeutic services provide indoor and outdoor activities preformed in a cultural protocol to address the creator and universal energies. Our traditional cultural approach avoids the western systematic services by offering our Lakota cultural ceremonies which only makes sense of our own working with our own. With guidance and direction of our traditional healer our services are centered on ceremony protocol reconnect values for self-respect and confidence. 

Our solution benefits the Rapid City Indigenous community, where Indigenous population is approximately 20 percent of the 85,000 total population. Within the youth and adult department of corrections, behavior health management, substance abuse treatment programs, department of social services, domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters, the Indigenous population is overwhelmingly high with approximately 80-85 percent in these systems. Redevising the substance abuse treatment and mental health management system is groundwork in the process of reclaiming wholeness as an Indigenous human being. Including the parents/guardians, grandparents and foster parents, then collaborating community resources to understand both worlds we live in for and inherent balanced lifestyle. 

With Indigenous culture development, we are reconnecting extraordinary inherent yet unexploited potential of youth, adults, and community, both Indigenous and non-indigenous educators will be amazed with rewiring their minds to healthy choices of support and learning. Our vision is to expand to serve millions of families and educators throughout Indigenous lands and the entire continent so no matter what background or ethnicity, everyone will be successful with identity and understand history. Forming partnerships and communication to understanding balance in our universe, world, country, community, and ourselves is the intended purpose of ancestral legacy. The united states governmental process of kill the Indian save the man mentality is very much active in Rapid City, state of South Dakota, and Midwest. 

As Indigenous peoples of our spiritual homeland, He Sápa (Black Hills) of South Dakota, our great grandparents and grandparents experienced the boarding school era of genocide and acculturation, they were punished and/or killed for being who we are as first peoples of the northern hemisphere of mother earth. Confusion and loss of identity overwhelmed a nation of respect and dignity. We know through our traditional ceremonies it is time to step up and be who we are intended to be. Our youth are lacking traditional teachings and support due to struggling in a dysfunctional environment of alcohol and drug addiction. These are predominant factors we are focused on healing in the upper midwest of the united states. Our traditional ceremonies are key in our family focused healing, our traditional healer is very patient with our staff and program as he has been active in ceremony for the last 60 years or more. 

I am applying to Solve because I want America to know Indigenous people have an effective way to address addiction healing and mental health management with their own cultural ceremonies. Our wholistic approach is key to decolonizing the system we are accustomed to for too many years. These deep cultures continually mix, clash, and cooperate within individuals, families, situations, and systems. They add to the schizophrenia and to the compatibility of the society which makes Lakota tradition so incomprehensible for some and so delightful to others. These deep cultures are more than interesting anthropological points of inquiry. They have very serious implications to our society.  They form the foundation upon which we build our relationships with one another, how we interact with our environment, our attitudes to time, justice, sharing and caring, family, medicine, They are guiding forces to our individual and collective futures. Thank you,

Our team lead is connected to the Indigenous community from day one. I have been in the shoes of those struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. I am free of the substance for 24 years, and I want others that are caught up with these poisons to understand and experience a healthier lifestyle. I have a Masters degree in Administration-Specializing in Addiction Studies, I was a director for our Oglala Sioux Tribe Native Residential Addiction Healing Program, an Instructor at our Oglala Lakota College since 2009, and an cultural advisor on our Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Rapid City, SD., community. I serve on many organization as a board member and advisor.