On paper, a dozen vegetable gardens at homes on the reservation might seem like a small, perhaps insignificant effort in the face of deep poverty, food insecurity, and ongoing dispossession.
But when you look at the bigger picture, the generational, from-the-ground-up nature of this work, perhaps a dozen gardens are part of a shift towards sustainability, food sovereignty, and a future of abundance for Native communities working hard to transform the challenging circumstances surrounding them.
Here are three ways we’ve been reminded recently of the powerful transformation that can come from these little steps towards a better future:
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1. A message from a Lakota mother illustrating the ripple effects of a single garden:
“Look, I gave away my first vegetable bag. The lady loved it.” This text (along with the photo below) was sent to us by a Lakota mother of four and Tipi Raisers Tokala last week. Alongside her husband, she has been harvesting potatoes, onions and more from the garden she and her family planted with our team. The harvest has been abundant - providing enough yield for her to share with elders in her community throughout the growing season.

2. A beautiful lesson on the science and Indigenous wisdom that help these gardens grow:
Another truck full of buffalo manure, provided by our partners at the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd at CSU, is soon to be delivered to the gardens of families we serve on Pine Ridge. Our friends from Common Name Farm, who lead our garden initiative, have noted that the use of this fertilizer restores, in a small way, a balance to the Great Plains ecosystems devastated by the government-orchestrated herd slaughters a century ago. The farmers have also observed that plants fertilized with the buffalo manure grow taller, stronger, and faster than those fertilized by store-bought fertilizer - a testament to the symbiotic relationship between the Buffalo, the plant beings, and the sacred lands of the Lakota and other Plains Tribes.

3. A snapshot of the intergenerational, cross-cultural collaboration that sows the seeds of change:
In June, longtime volunteer Joe worked alongside Gen7 youth on Pine Ridge to plant and tend to home gardens. Joe and the young man in this photo represent the connection and healing that can take place when youth and adult mentors, Native and non-Native, remain committed to coming back again and again in a spirit of reconciliation.

Our work is comprised of small acts;  youth planting gardens, volunteers packing monthly food boxes, youth chopping firewood, communities reconnecting to the buffalo - but when we stay committed to these little steps toward change, the small things become the big things.
Thank you for walking this road with us.

The village of Sitsomovi is one of a small cluster of villages on First Mesa, perched 300 feet above the valley floor – a place where people have made their very humble homes for over 1,000 years – perhaps longer.  Families still live in mud and adobe homes – some now fortified by cinder block walls.  Some with running water, many without.   And most inhabited by descendants of the Hopi people who first farmed, hunted and dwelled in this area prior to the Spanish who came to dwell here also – and who did so through attempts to convert and conquer.

A group of us traveled there last week to offer our help – planting corn, chopping firewood, repairing and rebuilding homes, painting an old schoolhouse to protect it’s siding from the damages of the desert sun and doing our best to restore a hundred-year-old cemetery giving rest to scores of young native students buried amongst their veteran relatives and community members.

And then we met Orion.  An 18-month-old living under a roof that barely provided shade, never mind cover from the rains and snows that come to this land even as it is a scorching desert for much of the year.  A beautiful Hopi-born girl, raised of this land.  Brimming with the lessons coming purely from an 18-month-old and also from being born into a community that remembers and lives in the way that they do.
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The Hopi are a matriarchal society -- Orion will inherit the centuries-old home when it is her turn.  As her mother did.  And her grandmother did.  As did her great grandmothers extending back in time for centuries.  The current roof had only been put on less than 50 years ago – beaten and collapsing under the weight of a hundred bodies and feet that run across it, stomp on it and even fall through it as they peer down at the ceremonies that take place in the plaza below throughout the year.  The new one that the volunteers labored over in intense heat and under less than ideal construction circumstances, will last less than 50 years given the conditions.

Initially, the volunteer crew stood on the collapsed roof, looking around at the many other collapsed and failing roofs around the village and wondered what they were being asked to do.  A drop in the bucket.  And a band aid that would not remain waterproof in a decade or two, if we were lucky. And then they looked down at beautiful Orion’s smiling eyes – and they knew.  Orion reminded them every morning as she ran out the door to greet them.  And again, when her mother carefully brought her up the ladder to survey her new roof and she stomped and squealed in delight at what had been built in just a few days.

Orion’s unconditional love of this new invasion of strangers reminded us all.  As did her delight, pure love and ability to energize a crew of teenagers, elders and those in between to sweat and toil way beyond what was being asked for or expected.  Orion moved us all to realize:  That real change is possible on the reservations.  That transformative change is possible.  When we look back at what was accomplished:  the roof, firewood, gardens, new plumbing, a new “tiny home”, school painted.  Not half of that was possible given the limited time, the mixed skill level of volunteers, the lack of financial resources and adequate building materials or tools.  But it happened.  It clearly happened.  When we hear about the power of love and community and service to others, we know now what those all make possible.  
As seen through Orion’s eyes.
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-- Dave