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First time down a water slide for this young Native American girl and others attending Camp is a memory and experience that will last a lifetime.

Visit a Sioux Reservation and you’ll look in vain for the recreational, athletic and educational opportunities that most American kids have in abundance.

On the Rosebud Reservation, for example, Indian kids don’t have a movie theater, a bowling alley, a shopping mall or a public swimming pool.

Reservation life can be so bleak that a lot of Indian kids feel their lives have no horizon, no future that’s brighter than the dismal poverty they face every day.

"No wonder the attempted suicide rate among Indian teenagers is four times the national rate..."

What a tragic statistic! Kids should never ever have to live in despair!

YYEESSS! On the reservation, the attitude is negative and depressing and hopeless for young Native American youth.  But during Camp Tiospaye summer excursions to places like bowling alleys, the attitude changes to positive and successful and hopeful.  For these Native American boys and girls, there is a new outlook because someone cared enough to help support NAHA’s Camp Tiospaye in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

South Dakota’s Black Hills – “Paha Sapa” in the Lakota language – is sacred to the Sioux people as the “womb” of their culture.

On NAHA’s property in the Black Hills, Camp Tiospaye offers about 240 Indian boys and girls aged 4-17 an opportunity to spend a week combining fun with learning more about their Sioux heritage.  Activities may include coloring, story time, movies, educational games and trips to destinations like a fish hatchery, Storybook Land, Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument and a waterslide park.  There will also be swimming, basketball and tennis lessons, as well as cultural enrichment programs featuring revered elders from the children's own tribes passing on traditional music, dance, stories and crafts.

For these children from NAHA's Tiospaye shelter for the homeless, Camp Tiospaye is a totally unique educational and recreational experience.

It is an opportunity to experience the simple joys of most American children and have a cultural, social, educational, and new experience.

We already have volunteers signing up from the Rapid City police department!  These wonderful officers have seen plenty of evidence of what a life without hope can do to the children, and they want to be a part of the solution by offering their own time.

We are proud to let you know that our plan for Camp Tiospaye has already been selected as an endorsed volunteer activity by the prestigious AT&T Cares Foundation and Points of Light Foundation.  So we are confident that these Indian kids will be getting the opportunity of a lifetime, a true glimpse of hope piercing the darkness of their young lives.

If you’d like to join in the Camp Tiospaye program and other projects of the Native American Heritage Association, please go to our Personal & Secure Donation Page.