Our Vision and History

The Magpie Community Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit extension of the Poor Bear Tiospaye (extended family) on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Poor Bears share ancestors who had land and homesteads along Bear In The Lodge Creek a mile down East of Allen, South Dakota. After the Dawes Act of 1887, which broke up collectively held tribal reservation lands into individual plots, the Poor Bear ancestors began raising horses, cows, vegetables, and potatoes. Living in log cabins, drinking from springs along the creek, and cutting their own firewood, our ancestors were able to meet many of their own needs by working with the land. Our Grandmas and Grandpas today remember growing up Down East on Grandpa Spotted Horse’s homestead where they played, hunted, helped in Grandpa’s gardens, and fetched water and wood for Grandma.

In the 1960s and 70s, an influx of federal money for modernized housing led many families, including our ancestors Down East, to leave their homesteads on the creek bottoms and settle in trailers and tribal government housing developments. In modernized housing and near more reliable roads, this choice increased the family’s ability to access resources including schools, paid work, fuel oil, electricity, government-distributed treaty concessions, and medical care. It also increased the dependence of the people on these things, decreasing their dependence directly on the land. Meanwhile, with most of the homesteads out of the way, the road was paved for the consolidation of grazing rights into the hands of relatively few, big ranchers. 

Decades later, in 2008, the Poor Bears chose Grandpa Spotted Horse’s homestead as the location for our Sun Dance. This reestablished a consistent family presence Down East. As the Sun Dance grew, more people spent more of their time Down East. The family and allies built the Cook Shack, multiple gardens, bridges, and other infrastructure. After many years of working together, the founders of Magpie came together and incorporated a 501c3 non-profit organization to assist in the further development of projects Down East and to support the ongoing needs of the Poor Bear Tiospaye. We are following the wisdom of Grandpa Spotted Horse, who told his grandchildren that they must utilize his land in a good way so that it will take care of the family for many generations. The Poor Bear Tiospaye today has many people with a wide variety of traditional and modern skill sets and wise elders to guide the way. It is our vision to focus more Tiospaye time, skills, and energy into generational projects Down East and beyond by paying Tiospaye members to teach, build, cook, learn, and garden with each other on our/their own land to enable a more self-sustaining Tiospaye economy. In a place where people struggle to find consistent work and make ends meet, we want to employ our own family to build the connected, land-based future we all want for our children.