Our Activities
Cheyenne Ironman and Wakpa McKay work with the community at Wipazoka Wakpa, Sioux Valley Dakota Nation
Activities.
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We recognize that life is ceremony and honors and makes time for connections with each other and with our ancestral and evolving wisdom.
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We honor and celebrate the diversity of Indigenous cultures, and it works to support communities that need more assistance.
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We create spaces to reconnect with our ancestors, land, communities, and lifeways to honor and improve our reciprocal relationships to each other and the land.
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We advance networking and collaboration amongst Indigenous people to rekindle our ancestral kinship relationships and routes.
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We share beneficial practices with each other in order to increase our avenues to collective empowerment.
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We share different forms of support and resources with each other to uplift Indigenous voices and increase our opportunities for success.
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We connect members to wisdom from the external Indigenous community in order to build our capacities for success.
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We employ the collective wisdom of our diverse members in order to envision and plan efforts in grasslands that redress past harms and support Indigenous people, relatives, and land.
Equitable Strategy
The IKC is guided by our worldview, and we are committed to doing work grounded in community for the benefit of our relatives. Our group collaborates on all the projects, and we make decisions through consensus at each of our meetings. We value and respect knowledge offered by our community and our environments.
Ava Hamilton, Monica Rattling Hawk @ Fort Collins, land of Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), photo B. Snow
Panel @ PCESC, Calgary, lands of the Niitsítpiis-stahkoii (Blackfoot), Ĩyãħé Nakón mąkóce (Stoney), Tsuut’ina, Ktunaxa ɁamakɁis
Braiding Education
The IKC is committed to sharing how Indigenous perspectives benefit our environmental and all of our communities. We are also building bridges with Western efforts in order to advance Indigenous priorities. We also provide guidance for how other projects can improve their equitable engagement with Indigenous people..
Community Connections
The IKC works to plan and and implement equitable engagement with Indigenous people in grasslands. It leads conversations with Indigenous leaders and allies working to support grasslands and their communities. The team updates a living report on the conversations, so it can inform IKC strategy and activities. It also regularly updates the broader IKC and takes action based on its guidance.
At Wipazoka Wakpa, Sioux Valley Dakota Nation
Monica Rattling Hawk at the Central Grasslands Roadmap Summit in the lands of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), and Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), photo by B. Snow