The Oyate Ta Kola Ku Community Center on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is hosting its annual Summer Rec program for elementary students. This free four-week initiative provides Oglala Lakota youth with activities centered on sports, gardening, cooking, and traditional arts to promote health and cultural connection.
The center also hosts community events, including sports tournaments, movie nights, and a 10K run honoring co-founder Billy Mills. These programs offer nutritional support and a safe environment for local families. The initiative aims to foster belonging and personal growth while addressing regional challenges like food insecurity.
Since its opening in 2023, our Oyate Ta Kola Ku (OTKK) Community Center on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has grown into a space dedicated to the health and well-being of Oglala Lakota families. It is a place where our youth connect with strong role models and are inspired to achieve their personal best.
This summer, that spirit returns in full. Beginning Tuesday, June 2, and running through June 25, OTKK’s Summer Rec program welcomes incoming 2nd through 5th graders for four weeks of afternoons built around fun, culture, and friendship. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 1 to 4 p.m., children move through a full circuit of activities — and, as always, it’s completely free of charge.
In the gym, kids burn off energy with tag, dodgeball, pickleball, and line tag. In the teaching kitchen, they learn to cook simple meals and snacks they can make again at home. Out in the garden, they get their hands in the soil, planting, transplanting, and harvesting, and watching food grow from start to finish. The art room fills with paper airplanes, paper flowers, and painted rocks, while in the sewing room, children learn to run the machine and stitch their own pillows and bags. The rec room offers time simply to be together, play, and make new friends, and nature time takes them outside to fish, walk, hunt for treasures on scavenger hunts, and capture the world around them through photography.
Also this year, every other Wednesday — starting June 3 — we’ll gather for Cars and Guitars, and on the opposite weeks, Thursday movie nights bring families together under one roof. When the weather cooperates, lake days mean paddle boards, kayaks, and a water slide for the kids to splash and play. And the Fourth of July promises one of the biggest celebrations of the summer.
We’ll also carry on the community traditions that have come to define a Pine Ridge summer: the 3-on-3 basketball and mud-volleyball tournaments, horseshoes and bingo, the parade, the fishing derby, and the Run Like Billy 10K, run in honor of Olympic gold medalist and Running Strong co-founder Billy Mills.
The children who come through OTKK’s doors aren’t only learning new skills — they’re learning the legacy of art, food, and craft in their own culture, and each child receives a meal as well. Last summer, dozens of kids learned to fish, our Medicine Root Gardening students saw the fruits of a harvest that helps their families push back against food insecurity, and teens trained for weeks to cross a finish line of their own. In a community where 54 percent of families live below the poverty line, OTKK offers more than activities — it is a safe, welcoming place to belong.
OTKK Director Rose Fraser and her staff have spent weeks preparing for the season ahead, and it’s hard to say who’s more excited — the team or the kids who’ll be arriving each week.
