This past week, in the spirit of the holidays, Conscious Alliance took a trip up to South Dakota and Montana to deliver several thousand meals. Three Conscious Alliance members—Jenny, Justin, and Jesse—drove a 24-foot truck filled with food to the Pine Ridge and Lame Deer Reservations. The truck was filled with canned vegetables, soups, pasta and pasta sauce, canned fruit, beans, tuna, oatmeal, and a 13-pound turkey for each family.
On Pine Ridge Reservation, Conscious Alliance established an emergency food storage facility in 2005. This food storage provides residents with much needed healthy food throughout the year. During most visits, the food is delivered directly to this emergency food facility. However, while delivering food to Lame Deer Reservation, which is a much smaller community than Pine Ridge, our Conscious Alliance Team actually went around to many community members' homes to distribute food, being able to directly interact with more residents. While presenting the food to families Jenny was “sometimes surprised by how many individuals comprise a household on the reservation. Many homes consist of multiple generations or several families. The average family home with 2 or 3 bedrooms often has 9 or more people living in it.”
During this trip up north, Justin celebrated his birthday by accepting an invitation to participate in a sweat lodge ceremony with the Conscious Alliance team. “It was an incredible honor to take part in the sweat and joined by such amazing people. The ceremony helped strengthen my relationship with all involved. Our partners on Lame Deer and those who work with Conscious Alliance are truly my extended family. The night ended with a huge chocolate chip cookie cake! What an incredible way to start a new chapter in life.”
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