Tiyospaye Crisis Center

Help us raise $35,000 to build an environmentally sustainable safe-house on Pine Ridge Reservation! This house will be a model for future Lakota homesteads and will support a local Family.

GOALS:

• Electricity 100% generated by solar & wind power
• Water system supported by a well, grey-water recycling & rainwater harvesting
• House designed to conserve energy & constructed with recycled materials
• Older family members trained to maintain off-grid electrical & water systems

OUR GOAL RE-HASHED:

We cannot save our future alone. To foster a Sense of Unity we helped form the "1000 Grandmothers" Tiyospaye (Community) which came together to support Standing Rock Water Protectors in 2016.

• Since forming new community connections at Standing Rock, we continue to seek ways to bring the community together and hold regular meetings to this end.
• 2018 we will prepare a volunteer camp space on Pine Ridge to continue out Sustainable Homestead construction: 
  • Add a tin roof to the outdoor kitchen; reinforcing where and as needed.
  • Shore up the outdoor commodes
  • Check on the integrity of the outdoor showers
  • Assist with setting up the kitchen appliances
  • Get the campgrounds ready for campers & volunteers
• Summer 2018: Moving forward we need your help. Please donate today.

winyanmaka07.webs.com

HOW TIYOSPAYE WAS FOUNDED: RACE FOR HOME

Told by Lakota grandmother & organization founder, Christinia Eala

"The ONE thing I knew I wanted to do more than anything else is this: create housing on the Pine Ridge Reservation for my relatives there.  I always became very sad when visiting my relatives because their housing (and most of the housing in general), was built in the '70's using sub-standard materials to build with.  As a result, most of the housing is filled with black mold of the most hazardous kind; they are infested with cockroaches and bedbugs. Housing authority sends exterminators to rid the houses of these things, but the insects just move out to the neighbors until the air is clear and then they go right back to their "homes".  If windows get broken out or doors broken into, if water lines are broken and pipes corroded they stay that way until housing authority can get to them for the much needed repairs, which can take months...sometimes a year or more."

COMBATING A LEGACY OF GENOCIDE

“Cultural genocide through alcohol/drugs, domestic violence/suicide, and prison recidivism are the modern day plagues of the Lakota People, passed to them through the many blankets of colonization.”

"There is the poverty of nutrition, food, of culturally relevant education, the basic human right of shelter, and most crucially, there is inadequate foster care for children removed from their homes and placed off the reservation in non-native foster care. Sixty-two years ago, I was one of those children."

DREAMS OF A GRANDMOTHER

"Now 68, and a grandmother to 14, I was that woman who was a single mother of five, I have staved off homelessness the majority of my life and I fully understand the feeling of desperation that can overcome the parents who more than anything, want nothing more than to raise their children in a healthy environment, free from gangs and violence, drug and alcohol tempatation; a place where healthy food can be grown and harvested for family and community consumption.

And then, the most remarkable thing happened, while envisioning of building homes on a family's ancestral homeland, the vision kept evolving until it became the vision of a homestead site with off-grid energy sources to help families that make less than $5,000 annually save money.

We want trombe walls, and greenhouses, anything that will help harvest the Sun's energy during the day to keep the homes warm at night.  We want the entire family involved in the building so the youth will have a voice in an education where the "curriculum" is tied into their cultural lifeways."

Please visit www.tiyospayewinyanmaka.com to see the wonderful agencies who partner with us in this effort to bring a small measure of true sovereignty to the Oglalas of Pine Ridge in the Lakota Nation.