Three ministries in the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota received great news in the recent weeks with the announcements of new grants totaling $55,350.
The Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission was awarded $8,000 from the Episcopal Church’s Young Adult & Campus Ministries for its Kaospe horse program, focusing on Lakota young adults who will train young horses, learn from Lakota elders, immerse themselves in Lakota Horse Culture, heal from historical and intergenerational trauma, and receive job training in the equine industry as marketable horse professionals.
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Sioux Falls, partnering with a new start-up of the ELCA called Shepherd’s Table, received $43,150 from the United Thank Offering to work with LBGTQIA2S+ youth in the Sioux Falls area. The work will be on providing a place “for all people to experience belonging and be welcomed at Christ’s table with no exclusion for who they are or who they love.”
Thunderhead Episcopal Center received $4,200 from Becoming Beloved Community to begin ELITE BBC, a three-month leadership academy for Episcopal youth/young adults that focuses on formation, truth-telling, healing, and justice to proclaim God's dream of Beloved Community in the Diocese of South Dakota.
The grants for the Kaospe and Shepherd’s Table programs will allow them to continue work already begun in each site. The Thunderhead grant will help begin a new program drawing together youth and young adults from Indigenous, Sudanese, and Anglo backgrounds to increase their leadership skills as counselors and junior counselors at TEC.
Kaospe (“horse in training”) Program, Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission
On the Cheyenne River Reservation, The Revs. Ellen and Kurt Huber, who run Black Horse Ranch - Sungsapa Othi as part of the Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission’s work, believe that the Kaospe project will “have a direct impact on redirecting young adults from at-risk behaviors and repairing trust between the Church and the Lakota community.” This program, they write, offers “healing and the gift of becoming Beloved Community” by aiming to “instill hope, cultivate skills, and foster resilience among Lakota young adults, contributing to the restoration of cultural connections and the development of a thriving, empowered community.”
CREM partners with the Cheyenne River Youth Project, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Youth Diabetes Prevention Program, Youth Affairs for the Cheyenne River Reservation, the Cheyenne River Cultural Center, Wakpa Waste Counseling Services, and Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous groups. This approach, the Hubert say, “ensures that the programs are culturally relevant and responsive to the broader needs of the community.” The Hubers wrote that this “groundbreaking program has emerged organically from the genuine interests and aspirations of our young adults, many of whom are grappling with uncertainties about their future.”
The Kaospe program is an evolving arm of the Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission’s Equine Programs, the Hubers wrote in their application, and was “sparked by the enthusiasm of young adults drawn to Black Horse Ranch as summer camp staff. Beyond the camp season, these young individuals express a keen interest in sustained involvement with horses, which has shaped the evolution of this initiative. Black Horse Ranch offers a welcoming, non-judgmental place of safety, rooted in the guiding principles of Beloved Community. It has become a gathering place for young adults who are interested in the restoration of Lakota Horse Culture. Their desire to work with untouched young horses, gather wisdom from Lakota elders, and immerse in cultural learning led to the creation of the Kaospe program.”:
Kaospe “has the beautiful outcome of drawing out Lakota elders to share their wisdom, knowledge, and skills with the young adults as they teach them to train and work with the Horse Nation. For this reason,” the Hubers wrote, “the hidden wealth of wisdom in the Lakota elders is our most important asset.”
Shepherd’s Table, Good Shepherd Episcopal and Shepherd’s Table of the ELCA
The Rev. Dr. Christina O’Hara, rector of Good Shepherd, will continue working with Rev. Sawyer Vander Hovel, who is the Associate Pastor and St. Mark's Lutheran Church and the
Mission Developer and Pastor of Shepherd's Table, which is a new start organized within the ELCA that launched to the public in December 2023. Shepherd’s Table is working with a variety of partners, including the South Dakota Transformation Project, whose mission is to support and empower transgender individuals and their families while educating communities in South Dakota and the surrounding region about gender identity and expression.
Shepherd’s Table estimates that it will serve and reach 100 people per month, intentionally inviting LGBTQIA2S+ people, families, friends, and allies, as it strives to welcome “the stranger who is seeking, questioning, hungering, marginalized, or who have oftentimes been overlooked.” The grant funds are slated to be used to purchase supplies for worship, pay rental fees for event spaces, offset the cost of provided meals, do advertising, host community workshops, and support Pastor Vander Hovel.
In his letter of support, The Rt. Rev. Dr. Jonathan H. Folts wrote that this project "embodies the challenge that our new purpose statement of the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota is inviting all of our congregations to live into – namely, the challenge of ‘Being the Church Many People Don’t Expect Us To Be.’ … [T]he Church carries a lot of stigmatism and responsibility for being unwelcome to LGBTQIA2S+ individuals and causing no small amount of harm. ‘Being the Church Many People Don’t Expect Us To Be’ is an invitation for congregations to learn firsthand what people’s negative stereotypes of the Church are and then to do something about these stereotypes. This is what Shepherd’s Table is doing,, and I could not be more enthusiastic about their work.”
Lutheran Bishop Constanze Hagmaier, in her letter of support, wrote that “Shepherd’s Table is currently building a dream in Sioux Falls, S.D., for all of God’s beloved children who are hungering for a supportive and loving community. Our. Hope is that through this new ministry, many people are able to find a sense of belonging in an oftentimes harsh world.”
ELITE Becoming Beloved Community - Thunderhead Episcopal Center
ELITE BBC at Thunderhead Episcopal Center, a program created by Canon for Formation Ashley Hubbard, will begin with an online book study and preparation for youth and young adults who will serve as counselors and junior counselors at TEC.
Following that preparation, the youths and young adults will attend a two-week intensive counselor training to obtain job skills, Episcopal/Anglican formation, leadership training, reconciliation skills, and cultural appreciation in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the surrounding areas.
After training, Canon Ashley wrote, the youth and young adults will develop their leadership skills, deepen faith, and actively work towards justice and reconciliation as counselors and junior counselors at TEC. Participants, she wrote, will explore Indigenous, Sudanese, and Anglican spiritualities, cultures, story-work, and visit significant cultural sites of the Oceti Sakowin (Lakota/Dakota/Nakota) — with Indigenous cultural interpreters — including Wind Cave, Bear Butte, Wounded Knee, Aktá Lakota Museum and Cultural Center, Journey Museum, and Crazy Horse Memorial. Participants will engage in storytelling as reconciliation/healing with Sudanese refugees and Lakota/Dakota elders, and practice truth-telling and repairing the breach by developing land acknowledgements.
“Stories of racism and genocide amongst Indigenous peoples and Sudanese refugees needs to be told — from the perspective of the marginalized — for the healing of the nations and for God's Kingdom to gain a more fulsome view of God's Dream for God's world,” Canon Ashley wrote in her application. “Weaving the truths of Indigenous and Sudanese Episcopalians/Anglicans with the promises we make in our Baptismal Covenant — to resist evil and repent — will help ELITE BBC participants build community, become more acutely aware of another's context and worldviews, discern the historic and ongoing sins/evil of racism and exclusion occurring to God's beloved in the Diocese of South Dakota (including Indigenous boarding schools, assimilation, denial of land and tribal sovereignty, refugee abuse, and human rights), repent, and strive for justice and peace through active participation in dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery through deeds of service that respect the dignity of every human being.”
In addition, ELITE BCC participants will participate in the Diocese’s anti-racism trainings of Owaste Wakan and the Dakota Experience as a way build cultural competency. TEC staff and the Diocese have initiated conversations with youth and young adults across the Diocese, as well as with tribal colleges in North and South Dakota, local state colleges and universities, seminaries, and the Niobrara Convocation (the Indigenous Episcopalian governing body) to recruit young leaders for the program.
The intended impact and outcomes for this program, Canon Ashley wrote, “are to raise up knowledgeable, culturally sensitive, reconciling lay and ordained leaders for service in the Episcopal Church who guide their advocacy and actions rooted in the Baptismal Covenant and guided by the principles of Beloved Community.” The hope is to “create a replicable and repeatable program beginning in the Diocese of South Dakota and moving throughout The Episcopal Church as a whole.”