Youth Employment Initiative Coordinator Wambli Quintana and Facilities/Garden Manager Dalton Fischer with CRYP’s new grow tower. (Photo/CRYP)
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- By Cheyenne River Youth Project
EAGLE BUTTE, SD — Spring is in full swing at the Cheyenne River Youth Project, even if Mother Nature didn’t fully read the memo. At “The Main” youth center, children are already busy with this year’s Garden Club, a full roster of art activities and exciting events like Junior Midnight Basketball.
Garden Club has been a staple of youth programming at The Main for more than two decades, ever since CRYP added the 2.5-acre, pesticide-free Winyan Toka Win (Leading Lady) Garden to its Eagle Butte campus. During each growing season, the club gives the community’s 4- to 12-year-olds opportunities to learn how to plant, care for and harvest crops; connect with the earth and traditional Lakota life ways; and engage with each other in the fresh air and sunshine.
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At press time, the kids were assisting CRYP staff with indoor seed starting, as the ground is not quite ready to welcome new growth just yet. At The Main, the Garden Club chose specific greens to grow and started the germination process through a tower garden.
“They’re growing a mix of spicy and mild lettuces, Bibb lettuce, kale and rainbow chard,” said Dalton Fischer, CRYP’s facilities and garden manager. “We told them to give good energy to the plants so they will grow healthy and strong, and the kids have enthusiastically responded. Garden Club has been uplifting for all of us so far this season, and we can’t wait to see what happens next.”
According to Hayley Dupris, programs manager at The Main, the children are intrigued with the entire process. They are excited about the greens they are planting, especially because some varieties are entirely new to them.
“One child asked, ‘Where is the lettuce? I thought we were planting lettuce,’” Dupris recalled. “I explained that it all starts with a small seed.”
The children planted marigolds as well, learning that these flowers are effective companion plants in a garden. Marigolds repel pests and attract pollinators, and they are beautiful.
“They were all engaged,” Dupris said of the experience. “They did not enjoy the fertilizer, but they loved watching Dalton and Sarah Berndt, one of our Youth Employment Initiative trainees, mix the soil. Afterward, when I asked the kids what they learned, they told me that plants need good soil, water and sunlight to grow. One child said, ‘They also need food.’ When I asked what kind of food they need, the majority of the class answered in unison, ‘Sun and water!’”
The official growing season for CRYP will begin with its annual Garden Blessing, which is scheduled for 4-6 p.m. on Thursday, May 8. Free and open to the public, the event will include the blessing ceremony, a round dance and a community dinner.
This spring, the CRYP staff has also taken its arts programming at The Main to the next level, thanks to its Lakota Art Fellowship program. One of the Fellows, Kai’len Turning Heart, is deeply involved with planning and facilitating arts activities for the youth project’s youngest participants.
According to Wakinyan Chief, CRYP’s arts manager, Turning Heart aspires to become a teacher and is currently working as a teacher’s aide at Cheyenne-Eagle Butte Elementary School during her seventh period. As part of her Lakota Arts Fellowship, she participated in an art career exercise in which she identified art teacher as one of her preferred career pathways.
“Once I saw that, I asked her if she would like to work at The Main with the littles as part of her Lakota Arts Fellowship, and she said she’d love to do that,” Wakinyan Chief said. “Hayley also loved the idea, advising that she needed the additional support for her arts curriculum.”
Not only is the team working closely together to develop and execute the arts curriculum, they have enlisted additional support for culturally significant arts programming as well. For example, acclaimed hoop dancer Starr Chief Eagle, who frequently serves as guest instructor at the Cokata Wiconi (Center of Life) Teen Center next door, created a five-lesson plan specifically for children at The Main.
In March, their arts activities included medicine wheels, handmade tiles, star quilt coloring sheets, watercolor painting, drawing self-portraits, paper mache puppets, and expressing emotions through art. They also had opportunities to get the wiggles out through field day activities, a trash pickup, games with CRYP's teen interns, and sensory stations that incorporated shaving cream, play dough, kinetic sand, slime and water beads.
Last month, the CRYP staff hosted a very special event for these youngest program participants as well. On March 28, from 4 to 8 p.m., they enjoyed Junior Midnight Basketball in the Cokata Wiconi gymnasium.
“For quite some time, the older Main kids have been asking when they will be allowed to start attending Midnight Basketball at the teen center,” Dupris explained. “Our tweens cannot wait to turn 13 and have access to the facilities next door and the popular programs they’ve watched older relatives enjoying.
“The Midnight Basketball hours of 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. are not ideal for our younger children, so we designed a special Junior Midnight Basketball just for them,” she continued. “It was a great success! The kids enjoyed free time in the gym, playing basketball with the scoreboard just like the older kids. They also had a giant Nerf gun war, which was a lot of fun.”
The Cheyenne River Youth Project, which now encompasses a 5-acre campus on East Lincoln Street in Eagle Butte, got its start in a little building affectionally called “The Main.” In the fall of 1988, a volunteer-run, drop-in youth center for children opened its doors in a former Main Street bar — and the rest, as they say, is history.
Although The Main moved to East Lincoln Street in 1999, it still has a large presence at the CRYP campus. It still welcomes children ages 4-12 every day to its robust after-school program, offering arts and crafts, games, physical activities, healthy meals and snacks, positive role models and mentors, and plenty of fun and laughter.
To support programming at The Main, visit www.lakotayouth.org/give, and select “The Main Youth Center” as the gift designation. To sponsor a monthly birthday party, simply write “Birthday Party” in the comments box; donations will help CRYP purchase the cake, decorations, gifts for the birthday children and any other necessary supplies.
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