“When dawn broke on that fourth day, adults and children emerged from their tipis. Mothers and fathers gathered at the cook shack while children laughed and chased one another through the green grass and wild flowers. The birds sang and all of nature celebrated the return of a lost tribe. Our elders have spoken of the sacred hoop being broken at Wounded Knee and how it would take seven generations to remake the hoop. That Sunday morning I knew the hoop had been remade.”
— Kevin Abourezk, Niskithe Prayer Camp
The Vision
Nearly 90 percent of Native American people live outside of reservations. Very often, they face many of the same social problems as their reservation-based relatives: disproportionate rates of diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism, and poverty. But unlike their reservation relatives, they typically lack access to land where they can gather to take part in their traditional healing ceremonies or grow healthy foods of their own.
It is the Niskithe Prayer Camp’s hope to begin to heal our urban Indigenous population in Lincoln, Nebraska, by utilizing land to provide that population with access to ceremonial grounds, gardens, and housing. For Indigenous people, land is everything, and colonization’s severance of Indigenous people’s connection to the land was, in many ways, the most damaging and lasting impact of European conquest. We believe that reconnecting ourselves as Indigenous people to the land and to the animals that once inhabited it will begin to reverse the devastating effects of colonization. By reminding ourselves what it means to be Indigenous, we can begin to imagine how we might heal the land and the plants and animals who live on it.
Niskithe is seeking to purchase land near Lincoln upon which to build the ecovillage, which we plan to call Niskithe ToNwoN, or Salt Village. We are seeking donors to help us and allies who can help us organize our efforts. To this end, we have partnered with the Decolonial Repair Network, a national coalition of primarily non-Native allies who support efforts to gain land for Indigenous people. The network launched the Honor Native Land Fund in 2023 as a vehicle for encouraging non-Natives to support land return to Indigenous people, and the network has included the Niskithe Prayer Camp’s planned ecovillage among the projects supported by the fund.
How you can help: We would ask you to consider donating to support our efforts to purchase land to build a Native American ecovillage near Lincoln, Nebraska. We would invite donations large and small but would highly encourage you to consider making a monthly donation so that we might “remake the sacred hoop.”
Partners
