Support Reforestation Across the Indigenous West

With your support, this year has opened up new opportunities for Trees, Water & People (TWP) to provide more context and transparency to our long-standing tree planting project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Primarily, your sustained support for this project has enabled us to implement proper training with a developed curriculum for volunteers and local indigenous people who help us plant trees across the reservation. We have learned, once again, that the importance of participation from local tribal members, before and during the process, is crucial for the survival and overall health of trees planted. Of course, we would be remiss not to mention the importance of the natural environment and a healthy dose of rain, which was very kind to us this year, as part of our success as well.

Nevertheless, in 2018 TWP planted 35,000 trees on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation and surrounding communities, as well as Bear Butte, located in South Dakota, in partnership with the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Last year we had an estimated 49% survival rate. This year the goal of our National Director, Eriq Acosta, focused more heavily on transparency in data collection and follow-up as well as the importance of holistic, ecological education of ourselves and the well-being of the planet. We focused on burn sites and beautification of surrounding communities at schools, homes, and community centers not only for the sake of reaching our numerical goals but also to intentionally give back to the Earth after so much continues to be taken from it on a daily basis.

One day, an older woman at Wounded Knee approached me and asked what we were doing and I said, "Planting trees", to which she replied, "I have been praying to God for trees". We most definitely planted trees on her property, and with the help of our friend Dave Bartecchi at Village Earth, we recently learned that our survival rate for trees planted in 2018 is 94%! This gives me hope that our continued effort to heal ourselves in the process of healing the land is providing greater fruits than we once imagined.

The success of this year has also been heavily favored due to the cooperation of our local indigenous partners and their willingness to take the time to learn about the importance of the tree and of tree planting for our future generations. We also want to send a huge thank you to all of the volunteers that supported us on this project. We would not have completed it without their generous support and willingness to travel a great distance to learn and be a part of these indigenous communities. One of our goals here at TWP is to help be a bridge for all communities, so we are honored to have witnessed so much amazing collaboration through this last year of tree planting!

With all this in mind and heart, we are already in the process of broadening our reach to other reservations across the United States to help educate more people on the purpose of trees and tree planting, as well as continuing the tradition of replanting burn sites. We are looking forward to a budding partnership with the Pueblo of Santo Domingo in New Mexico to put 10,000 trees in their surrounding lands at a burn site.

This is just a start, but our hope is to continue expanding on the number of trees planted in Pine Ridge in future years and other surrounding communities, so please stay tuned and we can not emphasize our gratitude enough to all of you who are making this possible. 

Baa ahééh nisin, díidí. (About it I feel grateful, this here.)