Before there were any of the mothers we know and love, there was the first one — our Mother Earth. Indigenous wisdom keepers have kept this knowledge alive and continue to tend to her care.
Many others have lost there way and while we hear a lot about environmental destruction in the news, one of the biggest threats to Indigenous cultural preservation isn’t getting headlines. It’s happening quietly on the margins of tribal lands. Commercial farming and toxic pesticides are wiping out ancestral Indigenous trees and native medicines across the country.
That means the loss of sacred healing traditions — and the severing of a relationship with our Mother Earth that Indigenous communities have carefully tended for thousands of years.
This spring, in the spirit of that tending, we are proud to share the story of Jasilyn Charger.
Jasilyn from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and leader of We the 7th Defenders — a grassroots group working to keep their ancestral ways alive. For the fourth year in a row, they are embarking on a 40-day camping journey across ten communities. To bring these medicines back, they are:
- Replanting disappearing Indigenous trees and native medicines into the land that first gave them life
- Cleaning up communities from the Oglala Reservation to the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation
- Gathering around campfires as their ancestors always have — singing, dancing, passing down stories that carry the memory of the Earth
Jasilyn calls what her team does “gorilla warfare” — a scrappy, determined, deeply loving effort to bring these medicines back, guided by the wisdom of their Elders, and rooted in the belief that their communities deserve access to their own healing traditions.
What strikes us most about Jasilyn’s work is that it is, at its heart, an act of caregiving. She and her volunteers are doing what the best mothers do: tending what is fragile, nourishing what has been neglected, and trusting that the next generation will inherit something worth having.
The Tribal Trust Foundation is honored to support this work, honoring the Mother, and recently awarded a grant to We the 7th Defenders to cover transportation, camping supplies, food, gardening tools, and the equipment needed to sustain their volunteers for the journey. When we spoke with Jasilyn by phone, her gratitude was matched only by her clarity of purpose. This is a young leader who knows exactly what she is doing — and why it matters.
Jasilyn’s work reflects something we believe deeply at TTF: that cultural revitalization and land stewardship are inseparable. You cannot restore a people’s medicines without restoring their relationship to the land. You cannot restore that relationship without the songs, the stories, and the intergenerational knowledge that make it sacred.
Indigenous traditions have always known what the rest of the world is only beginning to learn: that the Earth is not a resource to be extracted — she is a mother to be cared for. Jasilyn and We the 7th Defenders are living proof that this knowledge is not lost. It is being carried forward by Earth tenders like her.
Make a Mother’s Day Gift
This Mother’s Day, as we work toward more honoring of the Mother, consider a gift that honors all mothers — including our first mother so that together we can continue to support original peoples who have stewarded our one Mother for generations. Donate Today