Lakota Star Stories

For the last seven years, I have taught photography to youth between the ages of 8 and 16 at the Boys & Girls Club on South Dakota's Rosebud Reservation. The reservation is home to over 30,000 members of the Sicangu Oyate or the Upper Brule Sioux Tribe, a branch of the Lakota people. While the tribe has a long, rich history, the reservation is situated in one of the nation's poorest counties. The Boys & Girls Club works to combat the impact of such poverty on the tribe's youth, providing them with the tools to become healthy, productive members of their community.

In 2018, I received a commission to work with Club youth to develop artwork for a 2019 astronomy festival at San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences. I hosted a series of photography

workshops during which tribal elders taught Club youth about Lakota cosmology (also known as Lakota Star Knowledge), and I and two other teaching artists taught them who to photograph themselves, their surroundings and their community. We then worked with the youth to create 12 large photo murals exploring the relationships between the photographers, the natural world and the sun and the stars.

Participating youth traveled to San Francisco to take part in the festival.