11/14/2025
👊🏻🙏🏻
Something meaningful is happening in South Dakota — something that feels less like politics and more like a shift in the spirit of the land.
A Native woman, Allison Renville, has stepped forward with courage, rooted in Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota lineage and the long breath of her ancestors. In a state shaped by our stories, our rivers, our songs, her voice rises like a morning wind — gentle, steady, carrying possibility.
Her path began at Standing Rock, not as a candidate, but as someone who heard the call to protect nîpiy, the water. That kind of beginning changes you. It awakens a responsibility, a remembering — wîcihitowin — the call to help one another.
Now, she walks into a new circle, guided by the belief that South Dakota can be a place where community is stronger than division, where growth includes compassion, where people feel seen and supported. She speaks of healing the relationships between peoples, honoring the land, and lifting those who have been forgotten.
And for a moment, if we step back from party lines and elections, we can see the deeper teaching here:
êkwa — sometimes leadership is simply the courage to step forward with a good heart.
In a state where so many Native children, families, and communities have carried generations of weight, seeing a woman rise from this land — our land — carries medicine. It reminds us that our stories are still unfolding, that our presence is still powerful, that hope still moves through these prairies.
Maybe this moment is not just about an election.
Maybe it is about the land healing, the people returning to one another, the old teachings finding breath again.
pimâcihowin — the good path — is always made by those willing to walk it first.
— Kanipawit Maskwa
