Waldorf News

Greetings from the Lakota Waldorf School!

Dear Friends of the Lakota Waldorf Owayawa,

This has been a very full, exciting, and beautiful school year!

We would like to extend a very special thank you to all our teaching staff, office personnel, and everyone who helped make this year an amazing learning and growing experience for our students.

We would also like to thank our supporters who make our work at the Lakota Waldorf School possible! Our school always relies on donations to provide education to the children on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and every donation, no matter its size, is tremendously appreciated and reaffirms our commitment to our work.

Tying an Eagle Feather

The peak of the school year 2023-24 was our graduation in May. Luckily, the weather was nice, and we could hold the graduation and continuation ceremony in our outdoor amphitheater.

The graduation ceremony is a milestone in the children’s lives. According to Lakota tradition, men, women, boys, and girls are honored with an eagle feather for exceptional achievements.

This custom of honoring is one of the most important elements in Lakota tradition and life. Students receive an eagle feather during the feather-tying ceremony for 8th and 12th-grade graduation.

Some also receive a feather when they graduate from kindergarten and are ready to enter 1st grade.

College students are also honored with an eagle feather; men receive an eagle feather, and women an eagle plume.

The feather or plume is tied to a medicine wheel made of porcupine quills.

Then, the family asks a person they respect to tie the feather to the individual. This special honor can be appointed to a family member like a mother or aunt or anyone highly respected by the family.

A woman ties the feather for female students; for men, it is a man.

Receiving an eagle feather honors many other milestones, such as the Naming Ceremony, the Hunka ceremony (making relatives), weddings, coming-of-age ceremonies, the ceremony when a girl becomes a woman, and, of course, honoring a warrior for doing great deeds.

At the Lakota Waldorf Owayawa (school) graduation, we honor the eagle feather ceremony.

Unfortunately, even in this day and age, some schools, colleges, and universities in the United States do not allow this most important Native American tradition.

Note: Eagles are never killed for their feathers. The feathers for the ceremony come from eagles that have died.

Reviewing the 2023-24 School Year

The 2023-24 school year was full of important milestones for the Lakota Waldorf School.

In August of 2023, we moved into the final wing of the new building. Now, we finally have access to our new large cafeteria, offices, a commercial kitchen, and the sunroom, where we all gather every morning to begin the day and end in the afternoon with a prayer song.

We completed a full year of our new education program at the Juvenile Detention Center.

Some of our teachers work at the Lakota Waldorf School during the day and in the evening at the JDC, so this project has been a special challenge but also very rewarding.

We had another year of Eurythmy, which is a very special part of our school.

Our school’s student body is growing fast. We ended the year with 52 students, and we expect 60 students in the new school year.

We had another successful year of AIWP (Academy for Indigenous Waldorf Pedagogy).

We received a small grant for bees and will soon be beekeepers and enjoy our own Lakota honey.

Eight years ago, we designed the new school campus, which was finally completed in 2023.

Since then, our school has continued to grow, and we are already in need of more classrooms.

We had to split our combined classes up and will have our 7th and 8th grades in our old kindergarten building for the next school year until we can build another building with three more classrooms, one for grades 7 and 8, one for handicrafts, and one for Lakota Language.

We are searching for funding to begin this new project.

This is a big challenge because there is hardly any funding for construction.

However, it remains our next goal, and we know it will be possible with the generous help of our supporters.

Remember that the Lakota Waldorf School’s mission of bringing high-quality, tuition-free education to the children of the Pine Ridge Reservation is only possible through the support of our donors!

Learn more about the Lakota Waldorf School here.