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Programs

 

Center Pole conducts programs that increase knowledge and awareness and promote systemic change in Native communities.

The word "sovereignty" has different connotations to different people.  For The Center Pole, it means strengthening the rights, autonomy and dignity of community members.  

 

  • Our earth lodge demonstration project is producing an inexpensive, energy-efficient, sustainable one-room home using free logs from reservation forests gathered using fire prevention load reduction techniques. 

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  • Our alternative energy project will demonstrate simple solar and wind systems to the Native community they can use to save money and energy. 

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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. 

SOVEREIGNTY

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  • Healthy Food Production and Access

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  • Utilizing Traditional Ecological Knowledge

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  • Sustainable Housing

 

  • Renewable Energy

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  • Traditional Values

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  • Educating Youth to Be "Agents of Change"

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  • Entrepreneurship

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  • Scholarships

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  • Indigenous Media

FOOD ACCESS

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  • Gardening

  • Food Distribution

  • Meals and snacks for Elders and others in need

  • Health foods cafe

  • Training food sovereignty workforce- 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, sustainability, agritourism, and ecological 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.

CROW VOICES RADIO STATION

"a voice for the voiceless"

Crow Voices Radio, located at FM 91.1, is the first radio station on the Crow Indian Reservation. It gives a much-needed voice to community members as well as serves as a means of internal communication on the reservation.  We now stream internationally (18 countries) to broadcast cultural news in Crow and English as well as indigenous world news, sacred and contemporary music, local happenings, opportunities and educational programming.

 

Crow Voices Radio is also an intergenerational tool for youth to learn self expression, leadership and good citizenship. This is accomplished through multi-media youth workshops. An upcoming workshop is being designed to chronicle our expansion project by document progress of the various phases of the re-design of our campus.

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Streaming on:   www.crowvoices.com

TRADITIONAL ACTIVITIES AND WORKSHOPS

  • Singing, Dancing, Drumming, Storytelling, Parading

  • Regalia, Beading and other Arts

  • Traditional Herbs and Plants

  • Sacred Places

  • Spiritual Ways and Ceremony

  • Crow Fair "Tipi Capitol of the World"

  • Crow Native Days

  • Language Lessons

  • Cultural Excursions

  • Horse Culture

ASH KAP KA WI AA
Indigenous Discovery Center

Sustainable Indigenous Media and Education Center

Bringing together Indigenous leaders, creatives and brilliant thinkers to explore healing for Indigenous Peoples and the planet.

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The Ash kap ka wi aa Center is an evolving joint project with Indigenous Environmental Network. This is a unique community building being built with replicable sustainability principles.  Ultimately, the building will be the headquarters for training in media and a think tank for brilliant indigenous minds.

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