Lakota Dream for a Safe Home for Children - Coming to Reality

Levi Rickert, editor-in-chief in Native Currents. Discussion »

100 Gather for
Chief Wakinyan San Mani

GRAND RAPIDS - Chief Wakinyan San Mani, Lakota, traveled from his home in Porcupine, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to Grand Rapids to participate in several events, sponsored by the Gathering Thunder Foundation.

On last Friday night, he relayed to a crowd of approximately 100, a dream his deceased wife had to have a building built on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to provide a safe house for American Indian children in need.

Before the chief's wife died, she asked him to carry on the dream the Creator had given her. After she died, he went up a hill near his home on the reservation to pray and reflect. "The dream got bigger and bigger," he said. "As Lakota people, we don't do things with just our minds, we do things from the heart."

Soon thereafter, he discovered some written material that spelled out part of the dream.

The crowd was on hand at the Wege Center at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids as part of a fundraiser for the Gathering Thunder Foundation. The program was called "Legends of the Lakota as Told by a Lakota Holy Man."

The Gathering Thunder Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization based in Rockford, a suburb of Grand Rapids, has teamed up with the chief, some members of his family and other Lakota tribal members to bring the dream to fruition.

A ground breaking ceremony has already taken place in Porcupine to construct the safe home to be called Gather Our Children Home, which will be a temporary foster home with a completion date in 2012.

As part of Friday night's program, a short video was shown that depicts life on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Also on hand at the event was former Oglala Sioux Councilwoman and great granddaughter of Chief Dull Knife, Barbara Dull Knife.

"I am glad Diane Sawyer came to our reservation so that people know how we live. I live in a mobile home, because it is hard to have homes built on the reservation. The banks don't like to lend money to Indians," said Dull Knife. "I would like to say about the Diane Sawyer program: Some of us are sober on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Not all Indians drink."

Dull Knife was referencing ABC's "20/20" episode that was shown on October 14 called "A Hidden America:Children of the Plains" that showed image after image of intoxicated American Indians.

Dull Knife introduced her thirteen-year old granddaughter, Davian Stands-Gilpin, who is the first Youth Ambassador to the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. Stands-Gilpin did a jingle dress dance.

All proceeds from "Legends of the Lakota" will go to fund Gathering Thunder Foundation programs and help to build the "Gather Our Children Home" the very first infant through age 12 Safe House to be built on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The foundation received its non-profit status in 2009 from the US Internal Revenue Service, but had its genesis in 2006 when a group of friends and families collected food, clothing and household goods and had them delivered to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Other activities included providing funds to needy families on the reservation to keep their electricity and heat on during the winter months. Every dollar raised by the foundation goes to programs.

For more information, visit GatheringThunderFoundation.org

posted November 7, 2011 7:30 am est