The Center Pole Foundation on the Crow Indian Reservation

Country:

United States

Organization:

The Center Pole Foundation

Project Description:

The Center Pole Foundation is a nonprofit National Heritage foundation which seeks to promote the exchange of ideas and understanding between Indian reservations and mainstream culture, to empower Native American youth through knowledge and global awareness, and to train them as agents of change on the reservation. The WellKnown Buffalo Cultural Center and Living Museum is a project of the Center Pole Foundation and serves the Crow community and public as a crosscultural education center and repository for Indian reservation culture and history. Center Pole has also organized native-run tour company called A Wa Ku Leh that offers tours of pristine tribal lands and introduces outsiders to the Crow culture and heritage in festivals and everyday life.

Marilyn is nominating this project because:

My friend Susie Kelly has been involved with the Crow Reservation since the 1990s when she first visited the reservation as a photo editor on assignment for Time-Life Books. She met Peggy White Wellknown Buffalo who was struggling to provide adequate housing and after-school enrichment for children on the reservation. Susie helped Peggy set up The Center Pole Foundation which has built inexpensive, high-quality strawbale housing and which educates and empowers Crow youth in their heritage by establishing the Wellknown Buffalo Cultural and Living Museum and A Wa Ku Leh Tours. The Kelly Foundation and Center Pole has helped prepared Crow students for college and has arranged scholarships for several of them, who have returned to help others on the Crow reservation, one of the poorest in the US.