GPAS started building in 2014 and became an official non-profit in 2017. We now have three full-time staff, two part-time staff, and three youth interns. Founder, Sikowis Nobiss, who started organizing over twenty-five years ago during the Burnt Church Indigenous fisheries crisis in New Brunswick, Canada, saw that Iowa needed more Indigenous voices to speak up for the Earth. During the NoDAPL resistance movement in 2016, she created a platform for Great Plains Action Society to empower Indigenous voices in Iowa concerning extreme resource extraction perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry. During this fight, GPAS worked tirelessly in both Iowa and North Dakota, bridging the gap between Indigenous communities and rural landowners. This led GPAS to form Little Creek Camp, an Indigenous-led resistance hub in Iowa and to finally register as a 501(c)3 that is 100% Indigenous-run. Our efforts have truly brought the voice and actions of Indigenous Peoples to the forefront of Iowa’s climate movement, which is much needed in the most biologically colonized state in the country and the number one contributor to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico due to colonial-capitalist farming practices. By uplifting traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge, we are making it clear that Iowa needs to reMatriate prairie, bring back first foods, and increase Indigenous land stewardship.
OUR STORY
WHO WE ARE
We address the trauma that Indigenous Peoples and the Earth face and work to prevent further christian colonial capitalist violence by fighting for and building power in Indigenous communities through reMatriation, healing justice and a regenerative economy. We are a close group of Indigenous organizers of the Great Plains working in our homelands, which is located in the vast grassland of Turtle Island, situated between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River and stretching from the Northern Tundra to the Gulf of Mexico. However, our focus is in Iowa, Eastern Nebraska, Southern South Dakota and Minneapolis, but we work within many national and regional cohorts and coalitions.
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Founder and Executive Director
Representation Director
Siouxland Project Organizer
BOD Vice Chair
Executive Director
Science &
Environmental Health Network
Siouxland Project Director
Civic Engagement Youth Organizer
Dakota, Ojibwe, Pueblo
Land Defense Organizer
Elder Advisor
Ioway
Tribal Historic Preservation Officer
Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska
Terrance Medina
BOD Treasurer
Santee Sioux and Dakota
Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska
Fatherhood is Sacred