Programs
Center Pole conducts programs that increase knowledge and awareness and promote systemic change in Native communities.
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Our earth lodge demonstration project is producing an inexpensive one-room home using free logs from reservation forests gathered using fire prevention load reduction techniques.
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Our garden project will assist elders and their grand children to grow, trade and sell (and hunt and traditionally process) their own healthy foods, reflecting the past traditions of the Crow people.
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Our reservation-based system to transport and distribute “recovery foods.” otherwise wasted, about-to-expire food that food outlets in Billings are required to remove from their shelves. Center Pole redistributes these foods to the hungry on reservations.
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Currently, Center Pole transports and distributes about 120,000 pounds of recovery foods per month, over a million pounds per year. Food is distributed from the Center Pole’s warehouse in Garryowen every weekday and is also transported into the communities of Crow Agency and Lodge Grass on the Crow Indian Reservation and Busby and Lame Deer on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. During the distribution, a meal or snack is served for the elders and others in need of the community.
SELF RELIANCE
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Healthy Food Production and Access
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Utilizing Traditional Land Knowledge
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Better Housing
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Traditional Values
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Educating Youth to Be "Agents of Change" in their own communities
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Entrepreneurship
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Scholarships
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Indigenous Media
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Intergenerational Transfer of Knowledge
FOOD ACCESS
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Gardening
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Food Distribution
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Meals and snacks for Elders and others in need
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Healthy foods cafe
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Training food services workforce
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Growing, composting, gathering, hunting
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INTERNSHIPS
Our community internships are the cornerstone of our operations as well as a stepping stone for community members to feel better about themselves. In return, our interns receive hands on life skills, workforce and career training through our social enterprises and non-profit activities that include entrepreneurship, food systems, natural farming, agritourism, and land stewardship.
Center Pole assists those in the community with huge challenges: homelessness, drug and alcohol recovery, disabilities, poverty, and illiteracy, giving them a second chance, as well as those who are completing educational goals and need support to succeed. Our interns have gone on to college and careers of all kinds.
TRADITIONAL ACTIVITIES AND WORKSHOPS
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Singing, Dancing, Drumming, Storytelling, Parading
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Regalia, Beading and other Arts
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Traditional Herbs and Plants
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Sacred Places
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Spiritual Ways and Ceremony
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Crow Fair "Tipi Capitol of the World"
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Crow Native Days
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Language Lessons
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Cultural Excursions
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Horse Culture
FUTURE VISION
Indigenous Education Center
Native Plants and Indigenous Ways
Cultural Workshops and Media Training
Bringing together Indigenous leaders, creatives and brilliant thinkers to explore healing for Indigenous Peoples and the planet.
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This will be a unique community center built with replicable stewardship principles. Ultimately, the center will be the headquarters for training in media and a think tank for brilliant indigenous minds.