Sunka Wakan - the Lakota Cambridge School - a vision for the future

Sunka Wakan is a project of The Academy of the Fox Cities, a 501 c 3 not-for-profit organization with the goal of providing premium international standard educational opportunities for all students. Executive Director of Sunka Wakan, Jody Marriott Bar-Lev, states that “one of the goals of the organization is the celebration of global diversity and perspective. It is truly heartening to see individuals and organizations working on the creation of new schools across the world to break the cycles of poverty and address social inequities and we also need to recognize and address the same situation which exists within our own country. We are working diligently to raise awareness and raise the needed funds, the final vital step in the creation of Sunka Wakan.” Through The Academy of the Fox Cities, international educators including representatives from the University of Cambridge International Examinations Department, England, Harvard University, Lawrence University, and volunteer experts from a variety of professional fields, are working with the Lakota of Pine Ridge reservation on the creation of Sunka Wakan. This is a groundbreaking, innovative model of K-12 education that will address the dire and urgent need of the Lakota people. It is a collaborative approach with great promise to succeed where other approaches to education have failed. Based on research indicating that Native students who are both grounded in their own culture and fluent in the non-Native world have far better success in higher education, employment, and leadership, the Sunka Wakan project will reinvent education for the Lakota. Sunka Wakan is a whole school for Kindergarten through high school students built around the philosophy of grounding Lakota children in their traditional history, culture, and language while delivering the highest international standard of core curriculum education…a level of academics that, to this point, has not been made available to the Lakota Nation. Sunka Wakan students will have opportunities to attend institutions of higher education and will be fully prepared for success at university and beyond. In this way, Sunka Wakan directly addresses many of the barriers to survival and self-sufficiency faced by Lakota children as individuals … and by the Lakota Nation as a whole.

The horse (sunka waken “sacred dog”) is held sacred and is a vital and integral part of the Lakota culture. The Lakota are known as “the horse people” and horse programs will be an important part of the cultural teachings at the school. The Academy of the Fox Cities is partnering with the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros (ISPMB) to ensure that ecotourism, including herds of magnificent wild mustangs rescued from slaughter, will provide financial self sustainability for the school, provide opportunities for equine therapy and horsemanship for the Lakota children, and sanctuary and freedom for the wild mustangs. Although designated a national treasure the numbers of mustangs are dwindling in the wild and fewer than 180 herds remain. ISPMB is the first organization in the United States to be rescuing entire herds of wild mustangs, saving them from the fate of family bands being ripped apart, rounded-up and sent to slaughter. This meaningful collaboration will be a win-win for the Lakota Cambridge school and the wild mustangs.