How Gen7 Youth Put Our Mission into Action

You may have seen pictures of Bison on our Facebook, Instagram, or email newsletters over the past few months and wondered: “Bison?? Have the Tipi Raisers gotten into ranching?!”​

While we’d love to spend our days herding bison on the range, what we actually do with them is even more fulfilling and deeply tied to our mission!

For several years, we have partnered with Hester’s Buffalo Meat Company in Kremmling, CO to provide high-quality, culturally-relevant sustenance to the Lakota families we serve. A package of Hester’s Buffalo Meat accompanies every monthly delivery of food to each of the Pine Ridge families with whom we work.
But our work with the Buffalo Nation goes beyond efforts to address food insecurity on Pine Ridge - earlier this year, a partnership emerged between The Tipi Raisers Gen7 Youth Program and the Colorado State University Agricultural Extension.

Thanks to the folks at CSU, several Native and non-Native youth - as well as adult community members from the Oglala Lakota & Diné nations - have been able to work face-to-face with the bison that comprise the Laramie Foothills Conservation Herd in various capacities, and to earn a wage as they do so. Throughout the spring, Pine Ridge youth were able to learn from the veterinarian team at CSU about safely catching, vaccinating, blood testing and tagging bison. See footage from one of these “Buffalo Days” here!

Perhaps the most powerful development in this burgeoning partnership was the transport of five buffalo donated by the Laramie Foothills Conservation Herd to the Knife Chief Buffalo Nation, a Lakota-led herd on Pine Ridge that supports food sovereignty and cultural preservation efforts on the Oglala Lakota Nation.

On one beautiful morning in April, five sacred animals were loaded into our trailers with the help of youth and friends from Pine Ridge, the Navajo Nation, and Colorado. A prayerful and steady five-hour journey north culminated with the return of these powerful beings to their ancestral lands on the grasslands of what is now Porcupine, SD. The image of these sacred four-legged relatives breathing life into the soil upon which their predecessors once roamed is something that will stay etched on our collective memory forever.

As is the case with all that we do, youth are the life force behind the healing, learning, and connection which drive our bison initiatives. Trayton, one of the young people from Pine Ridge who joined us at CSU for a “Buffalo Day,” said the opportunity to work with animals so sacred to his Lakota culture was “a gift,” stating: “I can really feel the buffalo’s energy - it’s good energy. It was a great experience.”

We look forward to more "Buffalo Days" ahead and more opportunities to work with and learn from the Gen7 youth who bring our mission to life, in all that we do!

Wopila,

Mackenzie

This story is the second of the four-part Our Mission in Action series! Gen7 Youth is one of four pillars of our mission - wage-earning, skill-building opportunities for youth such as those offered through our bison initiatives help us empower and uplift young people towards a brighter future.​

Youth are also incorporated into all that we do, whether as volunteers on service trips, leaders on horseback rides and demonstrations, presenters at cultural events throughout the year, participants in important reconciliation dialogues, or community partners on the reservations we serve.

Gen7 Youth, Alleviating Poverty, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Wisdom are the guiding pillars which integrate across all our activities. Follow along over the next two weeks as we continue diving deep into the two remaining pillars of our mission!