The Yankton Sioux tribe in South Dakota are developing a long-range project to define and understand water quality on their reservation, in partnership with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. The tribe wants to develop a co-management plan for the Missouri River Bioregional watershed that will restore traditional Native practices of water and land management.
Native Organizers Alliance is partnering with the Brave Heart Society of the Yankton Sioux Tribe to support the creation of a new model of co-management of the Missouri River Basin. The model connects two core elements of transformational environmental justice organizing: the role of Native grassroots community and the potential power of tribal elected governments to exercise their sovereign right to co-manage the land, water and air in accordance with traditional teachings and values. The project is called, Mni Wizipan Wakan, the Sacred Water Bundle.
As part of Mni Wizipan Wakan, NOA is creating organizing trainings rooted in an understanding of relationality, kinship and other traditional practices. Strategic campaign planning and the trainings use popular education techniques to strengthen a theory of change premised on knowledge growing out of practice to strengthen and protect traditional culture while responding to 21st Century conditions.
