Wounded Knee Tiyospaye Project and Village Earth Develop Map of Traditional Tiyospaye Communities

Above: Map of traditional tiyospaye communities on the reservation.

Wounded Knee Tiyospaye Project, headed by Calvin White Butterfly, and Village Earth recently developed a map of the traditional tiyospaye-based communities on the Pine Ridge Reservation. This is part of a larger community-based mapping project which was initiated to help raise awareness of issues related to natural resources and community organization. The tiyospaye communities represented in this map have been fragmented over the years by the various relocation programs and cluster housing projects, opening up the land to non-tribal farmers and ranchers for a fraction of lease rates received on similiar land off the reservation. Many people living in the overcrowded and deteriorating cluster housing projects across the reservation have expressed a strong desire to move back to their traditional communities. Village Earth and the Wounded Knee Tiyospaye project are working together to mobilize the different tiyospayes in the Wounded Knee District to acess the resources needed to recover and return to their traditional communities.