Makoce Ikikcupi (Land Recovery) is looking for four (4) hard-working Oceti Sakowin young adults for a four-month summer apprenticeship centered around earthlodge building and community development. We are looking for people interested in all aspects of cultural revitalization, including traditional housing and teachings, language, ceremony, food-sovereignty, and simple-living. If you are interested in helping to revive being Dakota/Lakota/Nakota as a way of life, this apprenticeship is for you.
Zani Otunwe (Village of Wellness) is located in Granite Falls, Minnesota in the Minnesota River Valley. We have three earthlodges under construction with plans for four more at this site. It would be a summer of rustic living, in tipis and tents, with a compost outhouse, and solar shower. The village site is drug and alcohol-free. We would provide meals and a monthly stipend.
In addition to earthlodge building, you would learn about permaculture design and implementation, how to make garden sunlodges, about traditional plants, foods, and medicines, history, language, land justice, and traditional governance practices in today’s world. After completing the apprenticeship, it is our hope that with your newly acquired skills you might eventually be interested in living in one of our villages, and that you would commit to helping build future earthlodges for our land recovery project.
To find out more and request to be considered for this apprenticeship, let us know of your interest at: makoce.ikikcupi@gmail.com.
Makoce Ikikcupi is a land recovery project. As beneficiaries of Minnesota’s policies of land theft, genocide, and ethnic cleansing, settlers occupying our traditional territory have contributed to a land buy-back project as personal acts of reparative justice. Our nonprofit uses those donations to buy back parts of our homeland where we can revive our relationship with our ancestral territory and recover Oceti Sakowin ways of being.
Applications due by May 31, 2021. Send to makoce.ikikcupi@gmail.com.
This may be submitted in writing or through a short video.
Include your name, age, contact information, Oceti Sakowin blood tie/lineage, and tell us who you are and why you would like to apprentice with us.
Makoce Ikikcupi (Land Recovery) 