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This community of tribal members, youth, elders, volunteers and supporters keep our efforts to serve Native communities in motion year-round. Here are three recent snapshots of our mission in action: 1. Material aid & side-by-side service on Pine Ridge  Our August food box delivery to the Pine Ridge Reservation was full of sweetness! In addition to the distribution of food boxes to 25 Lakota families, a van was donated by a young volunteer to a beloved Indigenous elder. An afternoon spent unloading a flatbed full of firewood (split by students at the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning/RMSEL!) alongside Gen7 youth from Pine Ridge, non-Native volunteers and elders brought lots of laughter and cross-cultural connection to life. Wage-earning opportunities like these for tribal members not only offer important income for local families, but also help move reconciliation forward! Our volunteers look forward to delivering September's food boxes across the reservation this weekend. 2. Local students learn and serve Native communities  Speaking of RMSEL, school partners and local students have been hard at work to continue serving Native communities alongside us! RMSEL students continue to split firewood after school each Monday - every piece of which will be utilized by Lakota families throughout the fall and winter for warmth. Students from the Dawson School in Lafayette recently helped us load construction materials for homes on the Hopi & Navajo reservations. Other local schools and Gen7 youth continue to visit our Hub to engage with horse medicine, learn about Native communities and histories, and serve Indigenous families. We love seeing these Gen7 changemakers make a difference! 3. Volunteer magic on the Hopi & Navajo Reservations  The week of August 22nd-28th was jam-packed with service, learning, and connection on the Hopi & Navajo Reservations! A dozen volunteers from all over the country worked side-by-side with Hopi and Diné tribal members to build a tiny home for an elder, repair a roof at the 1,000 year old Village of Walpi, and create meaningful cross-cultural relationships. We're so grateful to the volunteers from D.C.'s National Community Church and beyond who helped make a difference for Indigenous families. Even as we evolve to meet the challenges faced by Native communities, our mission continues!
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We’re writing this while on the Hopi & Navajo reservations, where volunteers are working alongside tribal members as part of our 9th service trip to the area.The history of this place, and indeed all reservations, is fraught with broken promises. These promises - given by soldiers, settlers, boarding schools and the US government - are far too common in the Native lived experience. The volunteers walking alongside us here this week have taken that lesson seriously.  Washington D.C.’s National Community Church (NCC) was the first organization to send volunteers with us to the Hopi & Navajo Reservations in August 2022. NCC made it possible for transformative service to take place here in the tribal communities of the Southwest. Three years later, they have joined FOUR service trips and are fulfilling their promise to the Hopi and Diné communities with whom they have engaged in literally thousands of hours of service. It is beautiful to witness as they greet our local Hopi and Diné partners as longtime friends. Other volunteers who joined us this week from Colorado, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also embody what it means to keep one's promise. Duane Mullner, The Tipi Raiser's board president has worked and played alongside us for over a decade. This week, he lifted walls with Diné elders, split firewood for Native families, and built lasting connections with local tribal members. Last night, he shared with us: “For me, my choice to participate in a volunteer trip deepens my experience as a Tipi Raisers Board Member; it deepens my purpose, value and offers much guidance in my role to carry out our Mission!" Another volunteer is logging his 5th service trip with us to the Hopi & Navajo Nations, and continues to build homes and bridges with tribal members - whom he now calls dear friends. A young family flew across the country for their third Tipi Raisers trip, incorporating service and cross-cultural connection into the lives of their kind, leadership-oriented, and hardworking teenage children. Broken promises are a central element of Native & non-Native relations, but what if the story is changing? What if promises fulfilled can heal old betrayals. And, despite everything, our shared future can be one of reconciliation, of abundance, of love?  This week, volunteers have split firewood, painted a community center on the Navajo Nation, continued constructing a tiny home for a Diné elder, spent time visiting with an Indigenous grandmother and artist, and are helping to remove a collapsed roof at 13th century Walpi Village alongside Hopi tribal members.
We are enjoying another day of meaningful work and play with local families today as we close the trip out. -- Mackenzie & The Tipi Raisers Team Lakota elder and spiritual teacher Basil Brave Heart, on whose land The Tipi Raisers’ bison herd will roam, recently shared this wisdom with us: “Tell the people, especially the young ones: It’s time that they come here. It’s important for them to hear the stories and the teaching of the Pte Oyate (Buffalo/Bison Nation). It’s time for the bison to come back here, and for the lessons to be told again. I’m ready to share these stories. It’s important for them to be told at this time.” The Bison Rehoming Project continues to move forward and we are pleased to share that pasture fence repairs began this summer. And, in answering Basil's call to action, additional work will be carried out by a diverse group of young people this fall! We're looking forward to working alongside youth from schools across both Colorado and the Pine Ridge reservation. With their help, the pasture will soon be ready to receive dozens of bison from Colorado State University and other partners. This progress is all thanks to the kindness our community of supporters have shown this year.  Pictured: Gen7 youth riding the Tipi Raiser's herd on Basil's land as they work (and play) in the bison pasture. Here is what our Lakota relatives shared about how this project and and the return of the bison to this land will impact their communities: A skilled young Lakota horseman with two small children will be working directly with the herd. Sustained employment as a herd manager could change his life, and the lives of his family. Here’s what he had to say about the opportunity: “The bison will help me and my little family a lot. It will help me a lot more than what I’m earning now.” A Lakota mother and grandmother and her children (two of whom are pictured below with a volunteer in the pasture a few weeks ago) will also be working with the herd and earning a wage for their efforts. We asked her how the project will impact her family and community, and here is what she shared: "It would really help me and the family out by having extra meat and meat for the community - the ones that really need the help. Even teaching us how to keep bison, be around bison, and giving the kids activities and something to keep them busy."  On a spiritual level, as stated by Basil Brave Heart, the importance of these sacred beings’ return at this moment in time cannot be overstated. And on a material level, this herd will be transformative for families and youth experiencing the ripple effect of poverty on the reservation.
This is just the beginning of our commitment to bring transformative change to life for Lakota families. We are honored to move this program forward alongside our supporters, our partners on the reservation, and the sacred Pte Oyate towards a brighter future for our Native relatives. Wopila (a deep and immeasurable thank you). - Lori and The Tipi Raisers Team  30 volunteers from New England, Colorado, Washington DC, and the Pine Ridge Reservation are settling back in after a beautiful week working alongside Hopi & Diné communities. Here's what the crew accomplished as part of our May Volunteer Service Trip:
For a glimpse at the beauty, service, and fun we experienced last week, click the links below and view our recent Reels from the field!
SERVICE, CONNECTION, AND LEARNING IT STARTS AS ONE GARDEN... EVERY FAMILY DESERVES A ROOF PAINTING THE SCHOOLHOUSE  As we watch volunteers and tribal members work together this week on the Hopi & Navajo Nations, we’re noticing something beautiful moving through the group and the communities we serve - the spirit of reciprocity. Lakota elder and spiritual leader Basil Brave Heart teaches: "When everything has a monetary value, the commoditization of human life begins -- society loses the Sacred and human life starts to cannibalize itself." What we're witnessing on this service trip - and invariably each time volunteers come together with tribal communities - is the exchange of things far more valuable than money: 
And yet, there is a wealth of another kind here: richness in love, in connection, in the spirit of reciprocity that makes reconciliation possible, that alleviates poverty, that deepens understanding across cultures....and that, if we all lean into the act of giving and receiving in balance with the relatives around us, may just save our world. -Mackenzie and The Tipi Raisers Team Our friend maudlyn monroe, a Ft. Collins-based musician and longtime ally of Indigenous communities, is collaborating with the Tipi Raisers as part of their new album Heart-Shaped Rock! The single South Dakota is out today, and we're honored to amplify their music here on on our blog. This collaboration is inspired and informed by the Indigenous wisdom of reciprocity - we get to share maudlyn monroe's moving and inspiring new song with you all, and they are donating 50% of the proceeds from the single towards our ongoing work in Native communities. We got a chance to talk to maudlyn about their artistry, their connection with Indigenous communities, and the inspiration behind this collaboration with The Tipi Raisers. Check out the full interview below!  Cover art for Heart-Shaped Rock by maudlyn monroe Tell us about who maudlyn monroe is as a project.
Hi! I think first off, people get easily confused by the project name! They try to call me Maudlyn, and I should probably just accept it, and start answering! I’m kind of the whole project anyway. My last album greedy pushy needy is what I call “up-tempo emo/lackadaisical punk” project, and this album, Heart-Shaped Rock, goes back to what I call “orchestral indie folk.” So I’m a singer/songwriter, I’m a multi-instrumentalist, I’m a producer, and I’m a sound engineer, and I call the project maudlyn monroe because I have “so many emotions.” I play most of the instruments on the albums. I learned sound engineering to put these albums out. I also teach poetry, so there’s a real lyrical focus to what I do, it tends to be pretty lyrically dense. What's the story behind the single South Dakota? So I grew up in Sioux Falls, and then I left for school in Vermont. My junior year, when a lot of my classmates were going abroad, my plans changed and I didn’t go abroad. Instead I applied to be a teacher’s aide on the Rosebud [reservation], this other country in my home state. They were so in need of teachers that they offered me, a 20yo with no education training, a full-time substitution position. And I took it. It was really beyond me. I had studied decolonization, African-centered mostly, and I’d grown up with some Lakota friends and my mom was on the Tribal Arts Council. So I knew the damage I did not want to do coming to the Rosebud. But I was also really unprepared for the position. And I’d never been a racial minority before, nor a cultural one. And it changed the course of my life. I found out I had a calling to teach, and I did some good work, and I made some mistakes. But it was a really hard year for me—not even a full year, I had health problems, and I had to leave early. And after that I shifted a lot of my focus afterward toward Indigenous-specific literature and history. This song is about that complicated relationship with missing home, longing for home, feeling so frustrated by the colonial realities of my colonial home, and also feeling like I didn’t have a home there anymore. What inspired you to collaborate with The Tipi Raisers? I hate self-promotion. I hate it! I tend to feel self-promotion, and my music career at large, is kinda self-indulgent? But I need my music, and so I need to promote. What I don’t hate at all is mutual aid and community support. And I want my music to have meaning. I want to make music in a way that matters to communities I care about. I will shout every day about my songs, if it means that I can raise some awareness and support—and maybe even some funds—for those communities. I met Dave [when he spoke] at the Universalist Unitarian congregation where I also make music for community that matters, and I was just lucky y’all wanted to be a part of it! What is the importance of community to you as an artist? This is complicated and funny, because I both feel that art is central to community—and I struggle so much with community, even around my art, maybe especially around my art. It’s to do with my neurodivergence and my own trauma, but I also think it’s to do with, generally speaking, white cultures. We’re pretty fractured and individualistic. I feel kind of fractured when I hang out with my different friends and communities, like some of them don’t even know I’m an artist. My deepest relationships are with other disabled folks, and with other anti-racist folks, and with people in minority communities who need community, in this very material way, to get through the world. In these difficult times, I even struggle with, where are the artists? I was a music major, I have an MFA in poetry, I teach writing and poetry. All the art I’ve ever studied shows me that it’s central to cultural continuity, to survivance, to resistance to oppression. And I look around me and there’s some amazing art in the world! But a lot of it is also just…entertainment? I don’t want to minimize that. I think that’s important too. We need escape and relief and joy. But when it becomes a business like this then people say “stay in your lane” and “that’s not what art is for,” like they just want you to “shut up and be entertaining,” but that’s definitely what art is for! It’s for the messy stuff. It’s for the hard times. We need places to feel our rage and our grief and our frustration and our heartache and the complicated, complicated realities of being alive in this world. And when it’s a business, you have artists who stop being willing to put that complicated being human stuff, and fighting for the people who need fighting for, out on the line. This is a benefit of poetry, actually. No one expects to get paid being a poet. And my poetry classes are these oases, these glorious communities of people coming together in a truly human way. A deep-feeling, empathetic way where we feel complicated things, together. It’s not Native survivance, but it’s a kind of survival. I think the best art does that. As we reflect on 2024, we are holding deep gratitude for all who helped us serve Native communities.  It was a year of constant motion - volunteers, youth, tribal members and supporters jumped into action each week to answer the calls for help from the three reservations we serve. It was a year of connection, where hundreds upon hundreds of Native and non-Native people stepped into the fray together - to learn, share, understand and heal.
Just looking at the sheer numbers, an astounding amount of support was brought to our Indigenous relatives in the form of food, firewood, home repair, gardens, and more. Thank you. Even more impactfully, countless intergenerational and cross-cultural relationships were formed and strengthened. As we grieve the victims of recent violence on Pine Ridge, the importance of these relationships comes into clear view: We are stronger when we work together, across all of our differences and all that we share. When the problems of violence, generational trauma, addiction, cultural loss, and poverty feel most insurmountable - we hold tight to the transformative power of togetherness and connection, and to the Indigenous wisdom of “Mitakuye Oasin” - We Are All Related. As we walk together into a new year, we are energized to move change forward and to positively impact Native communities in new and bigger ways. In the week following another divisive election, we recognize that this email is finding some of you terrified and exasperated and others relieved and hopeful. All of you are a part of this Tipi Raiser's community, this circle of humans who range from curious to deeply involved in our vision of a future where children are thriving in interconnected and culturally rooted communities. This circle has room for lines of difference. We're comfortable with the discomfort of hard conversations, we're open to other points of view and we all agree that Indigenous wisdom is needed to inform and guide us through these troubled times.  We are committed to creating more opportunities for authentic connection; knowing that we are richer for our shared humanity which includes all races, backgrounds, generations and, yes, political viewpoints.
Together we will stay focused on moving our work forward, inspired by the vision of Lakota Warrior, Crazy Horse, in which he shared seeing "a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred tree of life and the whole earth will become one circle again." Come circle up with us soon! In Solidarity, The Tipi Raiser's Team In the 1870s, at a time of immense suffering for Plains Tribes, the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse had a vision: “I see a time of Seven Generations, when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things, and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom.”  Our world seems to be ever more troubled, and ever more in need of the youth Crazy Horse speaks of. Where can these young warriors of the Native and non-Native communities be found? This weekend, we found them at our Hub here in Lafayette, CO, in circle together, in service, in friendship. Nearly 100 young people of all the colors of the medicine wheel gathered with Native and non-Native elders to take part in various service projects, educational sessions, and reconciliation dialogues ahead of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.  Here is what they accomplished together:1 cord of firewood was split for Lakota families. 15 food boxes were packed for Pine Ridge households. Fields where fruit and veg for Native families are grown by Common Name Farm were weeded and prepped for the next season. Students from the Rocky Mountain Expeditionary School connected bravely and openly with youth from the Pine Ridge Reservation during a reconciliation dialogue. Lakota and local youth taught new riders how to tack a horse. Young Indigenous men found their voice at the sacred drum during a learning session with Thomas Yellowhorse and singers from the Rocky Mountain Indigenous Dancers. Click here for a video recap of the weekend!  As we watched people of all different ages and backgrounds work, share, laugh, and connect this weekend, we saw Crazy Horse’s vision coming to life before us.
The time of the Seventh Generation is now. Here in Colorado, on Pine Ridge, and beyond, there are young people capable of moving us all toward a brighter future. We are honored to witness them step into their strength as part of the Gen7 youth program. In gratitude, Mackenzie and The Tipi Raisers Team Most of the people our firewood program reaches on the Pine Ridge Reservation lack reliable propane, electricity, or their own transportation to pick up wood. When a family reaches out to us for help amidst the cold, here's what happens next: 
 Thank you for your support as we continue working together to alleviate the harsh conditions of winter in Native communities!
In deep gratitude, The Tipi Raisers Team |
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September 2025
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