ONE SPIRIT

Photo by Rafael Peier on Unsplash The cold air bends the tall blades of grass as a frigid October gust crests the hill. The howling night winds are dwindling, leaving room for the hints of sunlight stretching from behind the pine hills. We're just a stone's throw away from Allen. The drive from the youth center was short, and yet the landscape is completely different here in Yellow Bear. What seemed like limitless plains and prairies suddenly morphed into hills thick with tre

“Dacotah Village” by Seth Eastman (c. 1849). While painted in the mid-19th century depicting the Eastern Dakota, this artwork beautifully illustrates the traditional woodland bark lodges, canoes, and riverside lifestyle that the ancestors of the Lakota also shared before migrating to the Great Plains. When we picture the Lakota today, we see an ocean of Great Plains, with warriors riding alongside hundreds of thundering buffalo on horseback. But this iconic image is only half

Combining their ancestral woodland resilience with these new arrivals, the Lakota adapted at an unimaginable pace. Within a 70-year window, they transformed from semi-sedentary woodland farmers to the undisputed masters of the Great Plains. The vast oceans of grass, once too expansive to traverse on foot, became their new, boundless domain. At the peak of their dominance, the Lakota civilization was a vibrant, highly mobile society, perfectly in step with the rhythms of the B

Jeri Baker founded One Spirit in 2005, after retiring from her lifelong career in social services. Wait, retirement? For Jeri that wasn’t an option; there’s always more you can do. Jeri shifted her focus to Pine Ridge shortly after visiting the reservation. There, she witnessed a rich and wise culture deeply wounded by centuries of displacement, cultural suppression, and immense suffering. One Spirit came to be from a deep-seated need to help. Jeri’s commitment to providing u

When outsiders try to understand Pine Ridge today, many will see unemployment and poverty statistics. But modern statistics are a terrible diagnostic tool. To understand the reality of South Dakota today, you have to understand the ledger of 1851.

In the face of the hailstorm of harm weathered by our Lakota youth—both through the unbreakable bonds to their ancestors’ suffering and through the steep hurdles that still stand before them today—our youth stand stronger than ever. Fortitude, kinship, and compassion flow through their veins, not just because they are Native, but because they live through their ancestors. These sacred values have been passed down by wise elders who survived a century of atrocities. What was o

To understand the crisis facing the youth, one must look at the environment they are forced to navigate. Pine Ridge is geographically isolated; it is a food desert that offers terribly few economic opportunities. The extreme poverty caused by these systemic conditions has snowballed into shackles that can feel impossible to overcome.

Lakota culture is passed down generation by generation. Through an oral tradition, the values and wisdom of ancestors are shared with each successive youngest one. From a very early age, the youth—revered as wakȟáŋheža, or sacred beings—are taught to ride horses, to cook traditional recipes, to draw a bow, and to craft intricate designs using porcupine quills. It’s these traditions that bind the Lakota to the natural resources they walk upon and the living beings they walk al

Throughout history, the economic wellbeing of a community has largely been dictated by its proximity to ports, trade routes, and fresh water. But for the Lakota, this isolation was not a choice; Pine Ridge’s boundaries were forced upon them. With very little local development allowed or encouraged over the decades, accessibility hasn’t improved much since the reservation’s inception. Today, Rapid City serves as the local hub for necessities, fresh food, and building materials

Food sovereignty has been cropping up increasingly in a variety of conversations ranging across sustainability, off-grid living and indigenous rights. While we can often grasp the general idea, the roots of the philosophy must reach deep to ensure the Lakota can reclaim their food supply chains. It is about keeping the products and their yields local, bridging a feedback loop that sustains growth and reinvestment directly in the community. To dismantle the Food Desert, we dep