Mitakuye Foundation

Students created two short films, wrote and produced and original song, choreographed an original dance and learned choreography across multiple genres, wrote poems, prose, and personal essays, and studied the art of photography!

In addition to Traditional flutes, music, dance and brain tanning – students worked with various types of beads, leather and did a special program on plant medicines.

We were thrilled to have world renowned Lakota Artist, Dancer and Master of Traditional Flutes Kevin Locke join us for a flute making workshop. Kevin shared traditional teachings about the flute, took kids through the process of building their own flutes and taught them to play!

 

 

The art room was hopping from morning till night.

Students experimented with numerous mediums …

 

The Black Hills Arts Intensives included a 5-day workshop on hide-tanning. Students took three deer-hides – one already prepared as rawhide and two “green” hides that needed to be fleshed and de-haired – through the stages of soaking, stretching, fleshing, scraping, and tanning! It was a lot of work, but we had an awesome time! Avi worked around the clock to finish the first one, with the end result being beautifully tanned deerskin! Already looking forward to next year!

 

The theme for October is NATURE. This idea can be interpreted any way you want using any mediums you want. The deadline for submissions is October 1st.

Students can submit several ways – the most preferred is through your school. You can also email us directly or submit via Facebook. Every artist needs to fill out a release form. You can download here: Mitakuye Artist Info & Release Form 2018 UPDATE

Some helpful notes on submitting:

Please make sure all submissions have the students full name, age, school, and grade. Submissions come in best when they are scanned using a color printer. If you are going to take a photo – please stand the picture against a wall in good light (preferably out doors) with no shadows. Images are best when they are shot straight on and the art work is filling the frame. We want to give the highest quality version of your artwork to our judges! Video files and sound files can be sent for submissions that include dance, music, film, or other mediums that can not be photographed. Writing can be submitted as a PDF file or Word doc.

If you have questions feel free to email us at info@mitakuyefoundation.com or give us a call (605) 454-4000.

 

The highlight of our Summer Arts programming was a 6 day sleep-away intensive in the Black Hills. Students from all over the reservation came together as a unified group of artists to create work in their ancestral lands. The coursework included Visual Art, Digital Art, Dance, Yoga, Music, Music Production, Film, Writing, Photography, and Traditional Arts, including: beadwork, plant medicines, traditional hide-tanning, and a traditional flute-making and dance workshop taught by world renowned Lakota artist Kevin Locke. In addition to the artists that came to teach, we had elders, mentors and community leaders to enrich all aspects of the program.

More Highlights to come …

 

We brought the art to the streets in Pine Ridge! We worked with young people from the Kidz Club at YO Park in downtown Pine Ridge. Kids did work in visual art, music, dance and acro-yoga, film, and photography!

The first stop on our Summer Arts Immersion programs was Crazy Horse, a K-12 school in Wanblee. Students in Kindergarten through High School did work in visual art, film, music  and music production, photography, and dance. We finished up recording a song students wrote last spring and began shooting footage for a music video students are creating to the song. We will be back in September to finish up production on the song and music video. Here is a draft of the song so far:

The Mitakuye Foundation has been honored to support The 500 Mile Sacred Hoop Run for the last 7 years!

The kids run in prayer for 5 days in a 500 mile relay to sacred sites around the Black Hills. It is a powerful and important event that brings children, families, and communities together from across the reservation.

Thank You to everyone who has supported the runners! This year we were able to provide several thousand dollars of support, including the annual commemorative t-shirts. A special shout-out to Josh Fox who featured the runners in his film, Awake, and to Jeri Baker and ONE SPIRIT who helped provide food, gas, and supplies!  We have been documenting the Run since 2012 and will be featuring it in our upcoming film, The Heart of Everything That Is.