What it does
The mission of wambli ska okolakiciye is to empower the native american community to overcome barriers, revive cultural traditions, and promote resiliency in a compassionate and supportive environment. We walk alongside our people responding to urgent needs while reviving traditional lifeways, fostering education, and building pathways to self-determined futures. As an indigenous-led nonprofit rooted in service, cultural restoration, and community resilience, our mission remains intentionally broad, designed to meet the evolving realities of indigenous communities with agility, compassion, and strength.
Cultural & community programs- wambli ska teen drop-in center serves as a safe haven for native american youth in rapid city, south dakota, a city where systemic inequities in education, policing, and the justice system place indigenous young people at profound risk. The center provides a welcoming, culturally grounded space where youth can access basic needs, build skills, and reconnect with their identity and community. Services include homework support and tutoring, computer lab access, showers, food pantry, hot meals, life skills training, art and recording studios, suicide prevention programming, and mentoring. Cultural teachings, lakota language instruction, and community gatherings connect youth to their heritage and to each other. The center also offers a k-12 on-site homeschool option and operates a safe passage program protecting youth in high-risk areas. Zuya wicasa ta o'tipi | warriors lodge provides transitional housing and holistic wraparound support for more than 20 young native men in rapid city. The program offers mentorship, life skills training, cultural reconnection to traditional ways of living, and a secure environment for healing and personal growth. Pejuta waste o'tipi | good medicine lodge serves the unsheltered community through emergency shelter, a drop-in day center, nutritious meals, case management, showers, laundry, mail services, and access to medical and mental health resources. Both programs reflect wambli ska's commitment to meeting people where they are and providing the safety and stability necessary for long-term healing and selfdetermination. The organization also operates the following programs: (1) oyate court program restorative justice services promoting social equality and alternatives to incarceration; (2) wellbriety program indigenous-based addiction recovery support; (3)community violence intervention ensuring neighborhood safety and reducing police presence; (4) food sovereignty initiatives food pantry, community garde
Sacred storm buffalo is a workforce development and food sovereignty initiative that restores the connection between native american youth and their ancestral relationship to the land and the buffalo. Through two complementary operations a mobile harvest unit and a brick-andmortar butcher shop and market participants engage in hands-on apprenticeship training in every stage of buffalo harvesting, butchery, full carcass utilization, retail operations, and food entrepreneurship. Rooted in lakota values, the program reconnects young people to cultural food traditions, builds pathways to meaningful careers in agriculture and food production, and advances food sovereignty for indigenous communities by providing ethically sourced, culturally relevant protein and traditional foods to families and communities in need. Sacred storm buffalo represents wambli ska's commitment to empowering our people not just to survive, but to lead. The participants in our program are not between jobs or simply seeking a new career path - they have lived through years of unresovled trauma and grief. The conventional workforce development system was not built for our participants. Sacred storm buffalo is built on the simple belief that meaningful, structured work offered in the right environment, with the right support, is itself a healing intervention. Our program builds skill, responsibility, dignity, identity, and competence. Personal, financial, and purpose-driven sustainability is our goal - building lives that hold together from the inside out, not propped up by external support. Workforce development is not just focused on job placement - the program explicitly includes support for basic self-care, household management, trauma and grief processing, relational skills and community. This holisitc approach is integral to achieving our mission.