A New Movement on Standing Rock

What do you do when all your options for school kind of suck? That was the question some folks on the Standing Rock Reservation found themselves asking a couple of years ago. Young people were being bullied and harassed in public schools, and adults were worried that their kids weren't learning important tenets of Lakota language and culture. No one seemed thrilled with their options.

So a group of educators and parents decided to start their own school. It's called Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wóuŋspe or the Defenders of the Water School and it started during the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Now, five years later, this place of learning operates nothing like other schools in the area. The plan is for students to fulfill an English credit with a prayer journey to the Black Hills. They'll earn a biology credit on a buffalo hunt. And they'll learn history from elders in their community.

It's an ambitious undertaking that's come up against many challenges: securing proper funding, getting state accreditation, not to mention building the actual school. But the people involved in the project are confident that if they can make this happen, it will transform the way that the next generation of students understand their traditions, identities, and themselves.