Mitakuye Foundation

The 500 MILE SACRED HOOP PRAYER RUN is an annual run that serves over 150 Lakota youth. Kids run a 5-day, 500-mile relay that follows a sacred loop around the Black Hills and many other sacred sites in Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. Along the way the kids participate in ceremony, prayer, and traditional teachings. The run is based on the Creation story of the Lakota people which refers to a Great Race around the Black Hills between the “two-leggeds” and the “four-leggeds. The youth run in prayer for causes close to their hearts and to relieve the suffering of the people.

We have been sponsoring the 500 Mile Sacred Hoop Run since 2012

Our documentary film about the run Before They Were Horsemen … (formerly Sacred Hoop)is currently in post-production and aiming for release this year. See a sneak peak HERE

The Mitakuye School Arts Program serves over 2,000 kids on Pine Ridge and neighboring reservations every year! We provide arts curriculum, arts instruction – through our filmed art lessons, and supplies to kids in schools across Pine Ridge, Rosebud and surrounding areas.

For the 2023-2024 academic year we are looking to add another catalogue of lessons to our library and expand the program to film elders and master Lakota artists teaching courses on bead work, leather work, and other traditional arts.

Some of our lessons from our current library:

Our Summer Arts programs serve hundreds of kids across Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and surrounding areas. Some of our summer programs include our Art Days and School Residencies, Summer Art Challenges, and our week long Black Hills Arts Academy. We also support a variety of community events including youth pow-wows and The Annual 500 mile Sacred Hoop Run.

We travels to schools and communities to hold our Art Days events with creative lessons and art kits for all participants.

Art Pop-Ups and residencies bring art directly into communities:

The culmination of our summer programming is our Black Hills Arts Academy which brings in kids for a week long immersive program in their ancestral lands. Local artists and visiting artists from around the globe teach classes in Dance, Music, Music Production, Visual Arts, Filmmaking, Photography, Writing, and a full spectrum of Traditional Arts including: Quillwork, Traditional Brain-Tanning, Beadwork, Plant Medicines, Sewing, and Music.

While we are working on our new web pages we wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to all of our sponsors who help keep our programs running!

Thank you to our major supporters:

Lo Sprague & the Sprague/Guibord Family Foundation

Metabolic Studio with the Annenberg Foundation

Meera Levine & The Bill & Bonnie Levine Foundation

Mike & Lori Hendrickson

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Nation

And to hundreds of people that contribute every year through our fundraising efforts– thank you! Special shouts out to a few long-time supporters who keep us going:

Janet Roston & Barry Weiss, Elizabeth Casebolt, Stacey McKenzie, Jillian Harris, Diann Sichel, Louis Herthum, Roy Vongtama, Elizabeth Casebolt, Melissa Rathbone, Vida Vierra & Rainbow Body Matrix, Mary Gleason, Maureen Milligan, Jean Rousseau, Sachi Amatya & Aditya Kalavagunta, Beverly Carmen, Swami Sarvadevananda, Marylyn Lewark, Jennifer Klisak, Anna Getty, Jurate Kazickas & The Kazickas Family Foundation, Balthazaar Getty, Melody Walsh, Alan Salaway aka Lil’ Native Boy …

And thank you to the communities, schools, and organizations we partner with on Pine Ridge & Rosebud and beyond:

Red Shirt School

Loneman School – Isna Wica Owayawa

Red Cloud Indian School

Oelrichs School

Pine Ridge School

Wolf Creek School

Lakota Tech High School

Batelsand School

American Horse School

Our Lady of Lourdes School – Porcupine

Anpo Wicahpi Girls School

Porcupine School

Rockyford School

Lakota Waldorf School

Little Wound School

Crazy Horse School

He Dog School

Spring Creek School

Boys & Girls Clubs of Mission, Parmelee, and Rosebud

Oglala Lakota College

Singing Horse Trading Post

Running Strong for American Indian Youth

Idyllwild Arts Academy

Kerry Steever & Placerville Camp

The Guibord Center

And all of the partners we work with daily to make arts education and opportunities available to the awesome young people we work with...

Wopila!

2022 has been so busy we have barely had time to post! But we are always happy to take a pause to reflect on all of the great things happening at Mitakuye!

As 2022 started – many schools were still in hybrid mode with students working both in class and at home. Our School Arts Program was a big hit as it allowed kids to work both in the classroom and remotely! Our School Arts Program provides arts curriculum, instruction through over 50 filmed art lessons, and art supplies to kids across Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and neighboring towns and reservations. We delivered over 1800 art kits for the 2021-2022 school year.

With schools back in person we were able to bring our Art Contests and Creators Club back in full swing:

Our summer programs started off with the 500 Mile Sacred Hoop Run. 2022 was our 10 year anniversary of supporting the Run and over 160 kids participated: 

Special prayers were made for all of the MMIW. Randi Raeni-Shawaway applies paint and says a blessing for each runner:

 We even made time for an impromptu art class with the runners at Devils Tower:

On the last day our friend and long time supporter, Lo Sprague, was honored with a star quilt to recognize all of the support she has given to Mitakuye and the Run over the years:

Our summer art programs served hundreds of kids through our Mitakuye Art Days and Residencies in schools and communities across Pine Ridge and Rosebud including a special dance residency at Lakota Tech High School:

We also had the opportunity to support some young dancers by sponsoring a Youth Dance Special at the White River Wacipi with the help of our friend and expert judge Randi Raeni-Shawaway:

We expanded our Black Hills Arts Academy this year to experiment with offering shorter programs for younger kids in addition to our full time program which included kids from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Mission and Rosebud plus a special residency for the dance team at Lakota Tech High School.

We started off the week with setting up the tipi then got busy making art:

You can check out the film the students made here: https://vimeo.com/785475392

Our special sweetgrass project made with sweetgrass provided by our friend Vanne Mocilac!

Morning Circles, Daily Smudge, and of course, lots of time for fun and s’mores!

Our 2022-2023 School Arts Program is in full swing! Our junior staff helped out to prepare and deliver 2,000 art kits for students across Pine Ridge and Rosebud! Thank you Cisco, Elliana, Rita, Ramsey, Steph – aka Gramma Pepper – Dante & Shayne for making it happen!

We finished the year supporting 2 important community events – a Winter Toy drive in memory of our dear friend Eileen Janis & the Thunder Lake New Years Eve lock-down to give kids a safe and fun event to ring in the new year!

Wopila to everyone who supports these awesome young people and helps to give them opportunities to experience the healing power of art! If you want to help create more opportunities for these kids in 2023 you can donate here: https://mitakuyefoundation.com/donate/

In the second year of the Global Pandemic – 2021 surprised us in many ways! The year has seen dramatic shifts in the way we have worked with our students from the entirely online early Winter months, through the uncertainty and hopefulness of Spring, to the embrace of new in-person programming approaches in Summer, to our largest School Arts Program launch in Fall: 2021 has been a year full of swiftly-changing circumstances. And we have been there every step of the way providing arts education and resources for kids to express themselves as they navigate these rapidly changing and uncertain times.

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We started the year off with our Monthly online Hoye Wayelo Arts Academies and with the totally remote 2020-2021 School Arts Program. By Spring we started meeting with schools, community leaders, and Tribal officials to figure out if in-person programs would be at all possible or safe for the Summer. We finally came up with a plan to serve hundreds of kids with in-person and remote learning through our Summer Arts programming.

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We travelled to schools and community programs across Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations with our Art Days and pop-up programs.

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Our Hoye Wayelo Black Hills Summer Arts Academy was a beautiful reminder of the healing power of art!

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Check out more on our summer programs here: https://mitakuyefoundation.com/summer-arts-2021-is-a-wrap/

We were able to expand our Hoye Wayelo School Arts Program for the 2021-2022 school year. Building on what we had created in 2020-2021, we were ale to deliver art supplies to 1,800 students on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations and we recorded a whole new series of lessons for students to follow both in the classroom and remotely for students who were still in an online format.

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Check out more on our School Arts Program here: https://mitakuyefoundation.com/school-arts-2020-2021/

We were thrilled to be able to restart our Creators Club programs. Our Fall Art Contest theme was Freedom!

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We ended the year off with our Winter Toy Drive and were able to get over 600 creative and educational toys to kids across Pine Ridge and Rosebud.

We are already looking ahead to the new year! We hope you will help us reach even more kids with the healing power of art in 2022!

Your tax deductible, end-of-year donations can be made here: https://mitakuyefoundation.com/donate/

The 2021 Winter Toy Program is on!

Thank you to everyone who has been asking about contributing to the Winter Toy Drive this year! The global shipping and supply chain issues – on top of the global pandemic! – has posed a few challenges. But we have worked out a way, with some of our wonderful partners, to make sure we can get toys ordered and delivered on time!

So this year we will be taking monetary donations and purchasing toys directly. You can donate at https://mitakuyefoundation.com/donate/ Please be sure to mark “TOY FUND” in the program box.

The fundraiser will run through December 1st. Right now our goal is to purchase toys for 500 – 600 kids, but we will purchase as many toys as we can with the funds that come in. If you would like to arrange for a large or bulk donation please contact us directly to set it up.

Thank you all for your continued support! Delivering some uplifting and creative toys to the awesome young people we work with will be a wonderful way to end 2021!