Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wóuŋspe

 Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wóuŋspe is a high school for students in and around the community of Bear Soldier, Standing Rock (McLaughlin, SD). The goal of the school is the rebuilding of the Standing Rock Nation and the calling back of our spirits to who we are and can be. 

In Native communities, mainstream education has been so often used as an oppressive force, to disconnect us from our people, culture, language, and land. Its goals have never been to support our own sovereignty and prepare students to step into leadership roles in their own community.

We know that education that leads to healthy outcome for Native students is rooted in their culture and community. At our wóuŋspe, young people will be deeply immersed in Lakhota lifeways and language while also working with trusted mentors to understand their own brilliance and prepare themselves for a meaningful life path within our community. 

The oppressive boarding school era of Native education only ended in 1973. Government education in our community has not historically prepared young people for a meaningful life contributing to their culture. Simultaneously, the school system is failing Native students even by its own benchmarks. According to US News and World Report, 0% of students at McLaughlin high school are proficient in math, 27% are proficient in reading, and 56% graduate high school. This has real economic consequences. A 2010 report by the BIA estimated approximately 65% unemployment on Standing Rock. The per capita income is $10,682. This poverty and oppression also impact public health--the average life expectancy for a man on Standing Rock is 48.

We believe deeply that our community has ample brilliance to find solutions and that our young people have the capacity to transform our nation. However, we can't continue to funnel our youth all toward state-mandated goals of success that they aren't even supported in meeting. We need to make a change as a community and help our young people become the doulas, lawyers, permaculture experts, community songkeepers, sustainable energy engineers, and leaders that they are meant to be. 

Our wóuŋspe focuses on deeply connecting young people with their community and culture, while guiding them in developing their own gifts and engaging in meaningful post-high school pathways. 

We are in the process of working with a coalition of organizations to build a completely sustainable and off-grid facility based in the knowledge of the earth lodge. The site will also include significant traditional permaculture and land restoration. Students will spend a portion of their day here, engaged in project-based learning, and gaining the knowledge that our community has determined all Lakhota young people should have (including language/culture, academic skillsets, and understandings of sustainable tech and food sovereignty).

They will spend the other part of the day engaged in work toward their own unique path and leadership role within our community. They'll work closely with a mentor to determine their long-term aspirations  (in anything from sustainable tech, healthcare, construction, or the arts) and to research and create the short-term goals necessary for this path. They'll be matched with an Indigenous mentor and create a community-based capstone project that will ensure they have the skillsets and understandings to build their own individual gifts set out confidently on their post-high school journey.

From the beginning, this has been a community vision. At the Oceti Sakowin Water Protector Camp, families stood together and to create a way to educate their kids within our own culture and values. The school at camp functioned as a truly community-based space, where the many brilliant knowledge-keepers of the camp were involved in the education and guidance of the young people in developing their own power. Simultaneously, the students supported the community. They helped cook in the kitchen to learn math, traditional foods, and to serve their people. They helped erect tipis, studying geometry while housing their relatives. They sang traditional songs around the fire when spirits were low. 

This is all to say that while the wóuŋspe will directly serve the high school aged youth of Standing Rock, we see this project as one guided by and intended to support our whole community. Prior to COVID, we regularly held community meetings in which our curriculum and vision were guided by the community. As we design our facilities, we have youth and knowledge keepers on each call. To say that the wóuŋspe is working to engage the community would be wrong; the wóuŋspe and community are inseparable. 

True unemployment on Standing Rock (as reported by the BIA) is between 60-70%. The education system isn't preparing youth to become leaders in their  community. The MIT challenge highlights the significant number of roles that go unfilled because our education system de-emphasizes them. This is doubly true in Native communities, where our culture/needs are so poorly understood by the system. We want to support our youth in stepping into their power as fierce language specialists, as revitalizers of traditional food systems, as engineers of sustainable tech. We believe that this will transform the lives of our students and our nation.

Our wóuŋspe began in principles of connectedness at the Oceti Sakowin Water Protector at Standing Rock. Tens of thousands of people from all over the world came together to stand up together. We believe that this wóuŋspe, while targeted directly toward the youth of Standing Rock is an offering to all of those who stood with us. 

We are already working closely in conjunction with other schools and projects of sovereignty to learn together. Once the wóuŋspe opens, we will regularly invite other communities to come spend time learning alongside us in this process so that they can implement similar programs of sovereignty and support young people in their communities to step into powerful pathways. 

After we have been open for four years and are functioning at our full capacity, we will start a formal mentorship program, in which we will support other Indigenous teams in working alongside their communities to open their own sovereign schools. 

Part-time: 7

Equity and inclusiveness have been integral to the fabric of our school since its creation at the Oceti Sakowin Camp. It is a school created by and for the community, based in our traditional values. We do not believe in an education system based in a single teacher standing in front of a room. We believe in facilitators that help engage our young people with a vast network of knowledgable and trusted mentors, both within and outside of Standing Rock. 

We are currently working to continue to think through how to build an organization not based in hierarchal and colonial structures but based in our own traditional forms of government, where all voices are heard equally and valued. We are meeting with trusted elders and connecting and learning from with other projects of radical sovereignty. 

The current school system is radically misaligned with our culture and our community’s needs and in order to change that, we believe our school needs to do something radically different.

In discussing Hopi education, Gilbert Sakiestewa writes "Before Hopis attended U. S. government schools, used lead pencils, or sat at wooden desks, Hopi children received education on the mesas, in the fields, and within the walls of their stone homes." Similarly, Lakhota young people learned traditionally within and from their community, with the understanding that no single person held all of the knowledge and no young person had the exact same needs. It was through relationships and experiences that kids learned wolakota, or how to live in balance in the Lakota way of life. Our school seeks to return to this way of thinking, to take a community and experiential approach to supporting young people as they go on to live meaningful lives as a part of a community. 

We believe that through these relationships, with one another, with the land, with plant and animal relatives, our young people will be able to see themselves and understand their own pathways more clearly and passionately. We also believe that this deep level of community-involvement will keep kids from getting lost in an educational system that doesn't belong to them, but will instead support them in fulfilling their own goals. 

Our wounspe does not have one singular core technology, though it does implement various forms of sustainable energy technology. We are partnering with both local Indigenous solar and wind farms, who will both support our schools energy needs and train our young people in these technologies. We will also be using self-composting toilets, rainwater catchment, and greywater systems, which are crucial for young people to understand given both the importance of protecting our water and many elders' lack of access to plumbing. 

At the heart of our beliefs as Lakhota people is Mitakuye Owas’in (we are all related). This is our theory of change. We believe that supporting our youth, but also our whole community, in living in relationship with one another, the land, and the water is the key to the revitalization of our culture. 

Sitting Bull famously said, "Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children." The word together is key here. By educating our youth sovereignly, and not as a single teacher, but as a community, we make space for their own skillsets and gifts. We create support systems that allow them to find their own callings and to find solutions for our community. When our young people are supported by a loving network in becoming teachers, or community songkeepers, or doctors, or doulas, or spiritual leaders, or building engineers; when they know who they are in relationship to their people, to the water, to the land, then they step into the strength of who they are meant to be and in the process call back the  spirits of our community. 

Within four years, we expect to be serving 60 students a year and graduating 12-15 from our program. We are a small community and 12-15 students who are grounded in their culture, community, land, and gifts will make a significant impact in revitalization. As mentioned though, our community will be learning alongside our students. When our students are planting gardens, community members will be invited to come out and do the same. When our students are building and learning about composting toilets, our community members will always be welcome to come build and learn alongside them. We see our school as a sort of home-base or resource center for our community to see their own brilliance and sovereignty. Within five years, we expect to see our students working as leaders within their communities, building our sovereignty and connection, but also to see community members learning and implementing and being involved in revitalization in new ways. 

In four years time, we also plan to begin our mentorship program, in which we will support other communities in building their own projects of sovereignty and supporting their own youth in finding their own pathways and roles among their people. 

Our team is deeply linked to the community. Five out of six of our team members are Lakhota and from Standing Rock. 

-Native American Inspired Community Academy--we've received a fellowship, training, and financial support

-Bush Foundation--we've received financial support

-2 Revolutions--we've received training and financial support

-Sitting Bull College--institutional and programmatic support

--Standing Rock Community Development Corporation

--Living Stone Lodge--designing our facilities based in Earth Lodge

--Give Love--partnering for self-composting toilets, wastewater systems

--Mni Wiconi Integrated Clinic and Farm--partnering for mentorships and collaboration

--Medicine Wheel Living Park--permaculture partnerships and collaboration

--Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous People--organizational and financial support and training

--Hopa Mountain--organizational and financial support

--Schools 4.0--training in designing and executing a pilot, financial support

--Wend Foundation--financial support

--Defenders of the Defenders of the Water School--a group of leading Indigenous academics who acts as advisor

--McLaughlin Public School--working in partnership to help both schools successfully serve students (also working together currently to provide credit to students engaged in work with us

--Bear Soldier District--provides guidance, donated 60 acres of land

--Elders Preservation Council--provides guidance, especially in mission, vision, and curriculum

--Standing Rock Youth Council--provides guidance from youth perspective 

--Wakhanyeza Thokheyeca Collective--collaboration on Indigenous teaching methodologies 

--Teach For America Enduring Ideas--financial support and training

--NDN Collective--financial support and training

-PRBB Foundation--financial support 

--Indigenize Energy--collaboration on our solar energy 

--Standing Rock SAGE Development/Anpetu Win Wind Farm--collaboration