Niskithe Fall Encampment
October 2-5, 2025

“When dawn broke on that fourth day, adults and children emerged from their tipis. Mothers and fathers gathered at the cook shack while children laughed and chased one another through the green grass and wild flowers. The birds sang and all of nature celebrated the return of a lost tribe. Our elders have spoken of the sacred hoop being broken at Wounded Knee and how it would take seven generations to remake the hoop. That Sunday morning I knew the hoop had been remade.” — Kevin Abourezk, Intertribal Spiritual Lodges president

The Vision
Nearly 90 percent of Native American people live outside of reservations. Very often, they face many of the same social problems as their reservation-based relatives: disproportionate rates of diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism, and poverty. But unlike their reservation relatives, they typically lack access to land where they can gather to take part in their traditional healing ceremonies or grow healthy foods of their own.
It is the Niskithe Prayer Camp’s hope to begin to heal our urban Indigenous population in Lincoln, Nebraska, by utilizing land to provide that population with access to ceremonial grounds, gardens, and housing.
For Indigenous people, land is everything, and colonization’s severance of Indigenous people’s connection to the land was, in many ways, the most damaging and lasting impact of European conquest. We believe that reconnecting ourselves as Indigenous people to the land and to the animals that once inhabited it will begin to reverse the devastating effects of colonization. By reminding ourselves what it means to be Indigenous, we can begin to imagine how we might heal the land and the plants and animals who live on it.
Niskithe is seeking to purchase land near Lincoln upon which to build the ecovillage, which we plan to call Niskithe ToNwoN, or Salt Village. We are seeking donors to help us and allies who can help us organize our efforts. To this end, we have partnered with the Decolonial Repair Network, a national coalition of primarily non-Native allies who support efforts to gain land for Indigenous people. The network launched the Honor Native Land Fund in 2023 as a vehicle for encouraging non-Natives to support land return to Indigenous people, and the network has included the Niskithe Prayer Camp’s planned ecovillage among the projects supported by the fund.

An idea born from protest
The Salt Creek Basin in Lancaster County, Nebraska, was once home to many tribes who traveled there to gather salt. The UmonHon, or Omaha people, called the area Niskithe ToNwoN, or Salt Village. The traditional name for the Salt Creek Basin has become the name for a collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies who united in 2022 to protest a housing development to be built across the road from a sacred sweat lodge.
The Niskithe Prayer Camp’s members weren’t successful in stopping construction of the development but came away from the protest with a vision of continuing their efforts to educate others about Indigenous spiritual practices and, more importantly, teaching themselves about what it means to be Indigenous.

In October 2024, the Niskithe Prayer Camp hosted its first bi-annual tipi encampment near Lincoln, Nebraska. The gathering brought Native and non-Native people together to learn about Indigenous values, history and craft-making. They participated in nightly sweat lodge ceremonies and began to imagine a lifestyle built on reconnection with Unci Maka, the Lakota term for Mother Earth.
Following the fall 2024 encampment, Niskithe’s members began working to establish an ecovillage near Lincoln where they and other like-minded people could live and pray the way they want on land of their own.