Prior Lake, Minnesota - The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe will complete an Elderly Village on their reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, with a portion of a $1,000,000 grant from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. The remainder will fund a transit project.

In fiscal year 2006, the SMSC provided a $1 million grant for the Elderly village, which will be one of the first state-licensed, federally certified nursing facility on an Indian reservation. In 2005 the SMSC gave the CRST a $3 million loan for the same project. It will provide about 60 jobs for local residents. The facility will contain 60 beds: 50 skilled nursing beds and 10 assisted living beds. The 50,000 square foot facility will be open to both Indian and non-Indian patients. Currently elders live as far as 175 miles away from the reservation because of the lack of available nursing home beds. Groundbreaking for the facility was held on June 29, 2005. A fiscal year 2007 grant funded a tribally owned wastewater disposal system to serve the Elderly Village and future needs.

"There is urgency in bringing our elders home to the Reservation. Not only is this where they want to be, but they will also bring with them a culture that is being lost. Having our elders close to us will allow them to teach us...the language, our history, a forgotten value system. It will also show them that they have not been abandoned. Our elders need to come home because we need to save the culture, and because we need to rejuvenate their minds and spirit. Having a nursing facility close to home will accomplish that," wrote the Tribal Government in their grant proposal.

“We are grateful that your Tribe can help us in accomplishing our goal of caring for our elders on our reservation. Too many of our relatives are going to off-reservation homes and live their lives away from their homes and family. Thank you, again, for your generous help in the opening of our elderly village in the very near future,” wrote CRST Chairman Joseph Brings Plenty, Sr.

A part of the Oceti Sakowin, The Seven Council Fires of the Dakota/Lakota/Nakota Nation, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has a large membership spread over a large land base. A population of 13,270 Tribal members lives on a land base of 2.8 million acres (1.4 million in trust) in north central South Dakota with an unemployment rate of approximately 78%.

Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Chairman Stanley Crooks said, "We are happy to be able to assist the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe's efforts to keep their elderly at home on the reservation. We know that it is the wisdom of the elders that keeps a people strong. We think this is a good project which will support and encourage their cultural ways as well as help provide good jobs for their tribal members."

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community has funded a number of programs on the Cheyenne River Reservation over the past few years including $1 million for construction of a new Bingo Hall, $250,000 for the Cheyenne River Youth Project, $50,000 for a diabetes clinic, $6,000 for a suicide prevention program, and $27,200 for hay for buffalo and wild horses. The SMSC has also donated to several Pow Wows on the reservation.

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