Reservations

At Singing Feather Ministries, we visit reservations and rancherias only when we are invited by a tribal member. We will never arrive unannounced. Every visit begins with relationship, respect, and the blessing of the local tribal community. When we receive an invitation onto a new reservation one of our first steps is to meet with the tribal council, to offer gifts and friendship, introduce ourselves and follow proper protocol. We seek not only their permission to be on their land, but their blessing to enter their community.

Although there are many reservations and rancherias whom we have deep connection with and visit from time to time, the three primary reservations we serve on an ongoing basis are the Round Valley Tribal Community, the Hopi Villages, and Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Lakota people. For many years, we have returned to these places again and again, building relationships rooted in trust and walking alongside the people who live and serve there.

We spend time with tribal leaders, local pastors, and community members, asking simple but important questions. What do you need? What is working? What is not working? How can we help? We do not come with our own agenda. We believe the community knows best what their community needs, and we come first to listen and learn.

Our support has taken many forms over the years. Sometimes it has looked like friendship and shared meals. Other times it has meant practical help, such as purchasing angel wings for a children’s Christmas pageant or providing a much needed copy machine for a church office. While our work has looked different from place to place, the heart has remained the same. We listen, give honor where honor is due, and we encourage whenever we can. We strengthen what is already there.

Reservation ministry is a unique calling. Each reservation is its own nation, with its own culture, ceremonies, and history. While there are shared threads of trauma, every tribe carries a story that began long before colonialism. Each has its own language, traditions, and relationship with the Creator. Some communities are patriarchal. Others are matriarchal. All are distinct and worthy of honor as they continue to heal from injustices in the not so distant past.

When we enter a community for the first time, our role is simple. We sit, listen, share a meal, and learn. We make space for people to tell their stories, share their heartaches and hopes, and invite us to understand their ways. Many times we are asked to offer prayer, there is nothing like the healing balm of laying down all of our pain and sorrow and feeling the presence of God come rushing in with His peace. He knows the pain, He sees the wounds, and He cares deeply for each person, regardless of their level of belief. We see miraculous things happen when hearts and hands are extended in true compassion and love.

Serving Native communities is not for the faint of heart, but it is one of the greatest honors of our lives. We have participated in many weddings, births, and burials. We’ve held the hands of the living and the dead. We have prayed in rooms full of carnage from the previous night’s wrath, and we have dedicated babies to the Lord in the middle of the street because that’s where the parents had caught up to us. The relationships built over the years have become a family we did not know we needed. It is our hope that everything we do reflects the love, humility, and honor that is truly warranted for the people and lands that welcome us, and for the Creator of all things who entrusted us with this calling. We are all truly related. A’ho.

The Hopi Villages of Northern Arizona 

The Hopi people are one of the oldest continuously living cultures in North America. Their villages are located on the high desert mesas of northern Arizona, known as First Mesa, Second Mesa, and Third Mesa. These villages have been inhabited for centuries and remain home to a people deeply rooted in tradition, ceremony, language, and relationship with the Creator.

Unlike many Native tribes, the Hopi people have never been forcibly relocated from their ancestral homeland. In spite of immense outside pressure and land disputes, they have remained on their mesas, preserving their cultural identity with remarkable perseverance.

Hopi society is traditionally matrilineal, with clan identity passed through the mother. Community life is shaped by strong family bonds, agricultural cycles, and ceremonial rhythms that reflect balance, responsibility, and stewardship of the land. Farming is central to Hopi life and has been practiced for generations in one of the most challenging desert environments in North America. Through dry farming techniques developed over centuries, Hopi farmers have cultivated corn, beans, squash, melons, gourds, and other desert-adapted crops. While corn holds deep spiritual significance, farming itself is understood as an expression of prayer, discipline, and trust.

Each Hopi village carries its own history, leadership, and ceremonial responsibilities. Though the villages share a common cultural foundation, protocols and practices vary, and understanding comes slowly through respect, patience, and listening. Despite generations of external pressure, the Hopi people have maintained their language, ceremonies, and traditions, passing them carefully to future generations.

Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota

Pine Ridge Reservation is located in the rolling plains and badlands of southwestern South Dakota and is home to the Oglala Lakota people. While Pine Ridge as a reservation was established in 1889, it exists within a much older Lakota homeland shaped by deep spiritual traditions, strong kinship ties, and a profound relationship with the land.

Lakota life is grounded in community, extended family, and responsibility to one another. Spirituality is woven into daily life through prayer, ceremony, and storytelling, with teachings passed from elders to younger generations. The Lakota language, songs, and ceremonies remain living expressions of identity and faith.

Historically, the Lakota were a nomadic people who followed the buffalo across the plains. The destruction of the buffalo, forced confinement to reservations, and generations of broken treaties deeply disrupted traditional life. Pine Ridge today carries both the weight of historical trauma and the resilience of a people who continue to preserve culture, care for one another, and work toward healing and restoration.

Despite ongoing challenges related to poverty, limited resources, and isolation, Pine Ridge is marked by perseverance, creativity, and hope. Elders, families, community leaders, and local ministries labor faithfully for the wellbeing of future generations. Ceremony remains central to Lakota life, with sacred rites, dances, and seasonal gatherings practiced with reverence and care.

The Round Valley Tribal Community, Northern California

Round Valley Indian Reservation is located in Northern California near the town of Covelo and is home to the Round Valley Indian Tribes, a confederation of tribal nations including Yuki, Nomlaki, Concow, Little Lake Pomo, Wailaki, and Pit River peoples.

Unlike the Hopi and Lakota, whose languages and ceremonial life remained largely intact, the tribes of Round Valley experienced near total devastation of their languages, traditions, and cultural practices. Through violence, forced relocation, and systematic erasure, much was lost. What remained were fragments: pieces of stories, written records, memories held by elders, and faint threads of tradition quietly carried forward.

For more than 160 years, those fragments were held with care. In recent decades, they have become the foundation for extraordinary cultural restoration. Language revitalization, the recovery of ceremony, and the rebuilding of cultural identity are taking place in ways that are nothing short of miraculous.

Round Valley was the first tribal community that Singing Feather Ministries was invited to serve. Since 2008, we have been given a front row seat to witness this restoration unfold. In just seventeen years, the changes have been profound. Round Valley today is not the same community it was in 2008. The reclaiming of identity through cultural roots has been both humbling and deeply inspiring to witness.

We hold lasting gratitude for our Native friends and family in Round Valley who took a chance on us so many years ago and entrusted us with the honor of walking alongside them. It was also in Round Valley that we were given permission to use the name from the Yuki Creation Story as the name of our ministry, a gift we continue to carry with humility, respect, and honor.