THE TIPI RAISERS
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  • Home
  • WHAT WE DO
    • Volunteer Service Trips >
      • Customized Volunteer Service Trips
      • Open Volunteer Service Trips
    • Gen7 Youth Leadership >
      • Gen7 Upcoming Events & General Info
      • Gen7 Youth Ambassadors >
        • Alumnus- Gen7 Youth Ambassadors
      • Youth Leadership Summit
    • Lakota Language Classes
    • Lakota Ride >
      • Spirit of LakotaRide 2020
    • Race to Winterize Pine Ridge Homes
    • Trading Post
    • indigenous wisdom
    • Reconciliation Work
    • Nagi Circle - Food,Firewood, Mattresses and More
    • Tiospaye Friendship Circle
    • Testimonials
  • HOW TO HELP
    • Covid-19 Response
    • so many ways to help
    • Program Partners
    • Donate
    • Volunteer
    • Tiospaye Friendship Circle
    • Sustained Giving
    • ENGAGING YOUR NETWORKS
    • Nagi Circle - Call to Action
    • Host a supply drive
    • Organization's Wish List
  • Covid Safety Protocols
  • ABOUT PINE RIDGE
    • The History
    • The Lakota People
    • Current Statistics
    • The Land
  • WHO WE ARE
    • Tipi Raisers Team
    • Board of Directors
    • The Organization
    • Featured Volunteer >
      • Previously Featured Volunteers
  • CALENDAR OF EVENTS
  • PRESS & MEDIA
    • News & Articles
    • Blog

WHAT WE DO
RECONCILIATION WORK

RECONCILIATION WORK

A Lakota elder who speaks to our groups teaches us that reconciliation is "moving toward our own divinity" and that is where you will find forgiveness.​ Other – more traditional – definitions would say that it is simply about moving on after a disagreement.

This is complex work with no agreed upon definitions. It is wrought with generations of trauma from broken treaties, attempted genocide, overt racism and white guilt. We approach it with humility, curiosity and a deeply held conviction to get it right over time. Mistakes are made, misunderstandings happen. For our volunteers, where is their white privilege showing? For the Lakota, where are assumptions of prejudice or racism?

​Reconciliation – in this context, with this history – is about so much more than moving on from a disagreement. It is, instead, about accepting and acknowledging the pain of deep wounding that can't be resolved but only reconciled; it is not about finding resolution because there is no resolution for past crimes, for broken treaties, for the death of ancestors, for different ways of experiencing the Creator. There is only the acceptance and acknowledgment of what is.​
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 Each morning and evening, when our volunteers are on Pine Ridge or the Lakota are off the reservation for presentations or events, we come together in a circle. We burn sage and ask the elder in the group to start with a prayer (depending on who the eldest in the group is the prayer might be in Lakota or another denomination). And then the magic happens. Grown men cry, non-native teenagers curl up in the lap of a Lakota grandmother, there is sometimes laughter and often times profound silence. We believe that it is in these circles; and in the act of showing up year after year; and working side by side in the hot sun or the driving snow; and in staying in touch when the volunteer trip is over – that the seeds of​ reconciliation are nourished​. It is slow and it is one relationship at a time and it is at the core of why we do this work.​
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The Tipi Raisers is registered as a 501(c)(3) non profit organization in the State of South Dakota. All donations are tax deductible and a receipt will be mailed or emailed.

Donations can be made online or mailed to:
7830 W. Alameda Ave. Ste. 103-186
Lakewood, CO 80226

Physical Location: Little Finger Building
29128 US-18 Oglala, SD 57764

All media/graphics/photographs on this website © 2013 The Tipi Raisers/Ti Ikciya Pa Slata Pi.

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