Standing Bear Network

Standing Bear Network ᑲᓂᐸᐏᐟ ᒪᐢᑿ
SBN is an Indigenous-led community media and cultural storytelling space centered on healing, responsibility, and relationship.

Tonight is not about fireworks.It is about continuity.Our people did not mark time by explosions or countdowns.We watche...
01/01/2026

Tonight is not about fireworks.
It is about continuity.

Our people did not mark time by explosions or countdowns.
We watched the sky.
We listened to the wind.
We noticed what endured.

Another year has passed — not because it was easy,
but because we stayed.

Stayed when the world grew loud.
Stayed when grief visited unannounced.
Stayed when hope felt thin, but not gone.

In our ways, endings are never empty.
They are doorways.

Êkwa — and so — we step forward carrying what still has breath:
• the stories that survived us
• the fire that did not go out
• the responsibility to walk gently into what comes next

We do not rush the future.
We meet it with steady hands and clear eyes.

If you are tired tonight, rest.
If you are grieving, sit close.
If you are hopeful, tend that flame quietly.

The turning happens whether we shout or not.

Êkwa mâna.
And so it continues.






This is my home community.Pimicikamak Cree Nation (Treaty Five Territory, Cross Lake) is under a State of Emergency and ...
01/01/2026

This is my home community.

Pimicikamak Cree Nation (Treaty Five Territory, Cross Lake) is under a State of Emergency and a rapidly escalating Public Health Emergency due to a prolonged power outage during extreme winter conditions.

In –30° weather, this is not a technical issue.
It is a humanitarian and public health crisis.

Hundreds of homes remain without electricity or heat.
Water tanks are frozen.
Sewage systems are failing.
The community has now run out of potable water.

Families are relying on candles and portable generators for warmth and light, creating severe risks of fire, carbon monoxide poisoning, and medical emergencies. One trailer fire has already destroyed a critical water asset.

Even when power is restored, the crisis will not simply end.
Frozen pipes are expected to burst, causing flooding, home damage, displacement, and prolonged loss of water — extending the emergency well beyond power restoration.

Elders, infants, children, and medically vulnerable citizens are most at risk.

Many families have already been evacuated to Norway House and Thompson. With hotels in Thompson now full, Pimicikamak is working with the Canadian Red Cross to relocate evacuees to Winnipeg. Evacuation buses and flights are ongoing. Other families have fled on their own at personal expense to protect their children and Elders.

Approximately 600 generators were expected to arrive, many of them second-hand and requiring repair. With more than 1,200 homes in the community, generators are not a sufficient or sustainable solution.

Manitoba Hydro has confirmed the damaged transmission line crosses two rivers and is difficult to access due to ice conditions. Repairs may take several days or longer. Pimicikamak has already taken the initiative to build a helipad to support access — a step that should not have been necessary.

For years, Pimicikamak has warned that aging transmission infrastructure and refusal to relocate the line along the highway would result in exactly this kind of prolonged outage. Those warnings were not acted on.

As stated by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, this crisis reflects systemic infrastructure failures that repeatedly place First Nations lives at risk.

⸻

WHAT IS NEEDED IMMEDIATELY

• Emergency power solutions and additional generators
• Potable water delivery
• Sanitation mitigation supports
• Evacuation resources (buses, flights, accommodations)
• Fire protection and medical safety supports
• Clear timelines, accountability, and a permanent transmission infrastructure solution from Manitoba Hydro

⸻

WHO TO CONTACT / HOW TO HELP

Primary coordination and verified information:
Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC)
📧 [email protected]

AMC, along with Pimicikamak Cree Nation leadership, is calling on:
• Manitoba Hydro
• The Province of Manitoba
• Indigenous Services Canada

to engage directly and urgently, deploy emergency resources immediately, and commit to long-term infrastructure solutions.

If you can assist with donations, logistics, transport, housing, supplies, or advocacy, please coordinate through AMC or follow official Pimicikamak and AMC updates to ensure help reaches the right place safely.

Silence is not neutral.
Every hour of delay deepens this crisis.

Our people are not abstract.
Our elders are not expendable.
Our children are not collateral.

This is a public health emergency, and it requires immediate, coordinated action.

Êkwa kîspin ka-nîsohkamâtan pimâtisiwin, mâna kîya nîkân — and so, when life is threatened, we step forward together.

—Kanipawit Maskwa

Relatives, êkwa —No one stands alone.What we touch was raised by many hands,and it holds because we hold it together.êkw...
12/31/2025

Relatives, êkwa —

No one stands alone.

What we touch was raised by many hands,
and it holds because we hold it together.

êkwa, we listen.

12/30/2025

I come from the earth.

Relatives, êkwa —Come sit for a moment.Nothing is being asked of you hereexcept your breath.The land, askîy, has grown q...
12/29/2025

Relatives, êkwa —
Come sit for a moment.
Nothing is being asked of you here
except your breath.

The land, askîy, has grown quiet.
Not because it is empty,
but because it is listening.

Pipon — winter — does not hurry us.
It slows the heartbeat of the world
so we can hear ourselves again.

Some of you feel tired in ways rest has not yet touched.
Some of you are carrying questions with no answers.
This is not failure.
This is the spirit finding its place.

Our old ones taught us that even nîpiy, the water,
rests beneath the ice while still moving forward.
So it is with you.

Sit for a moment, relatives.
Breathe with the land.
Your pimâtisiwin — your life’s journey —
is still unfolding.

You are not lost.
You are held.

êkwa, we listen.

Not everyone wakes to abundance today.Some wake to grief. Some to absence.Some to memories that ache like cold hands.So ...
12/25/2025

Not everyone wakes to abundance today.
Some wake to grief. Some to absence.
Some to memories that ache like cold hands.

So we move gently.
We speak carefully.
We make room at the table—for those here, and those carried in spirit.

May this morning offer you one quiet blessing:
A breath that lands.
A moment that does not demand.
A sense that you are not alone in the dark.

However this day meets you—
May it meet you kindly.

Kisâkihitinawâw. 🎄🕯️

—Kanipawit Maskwa

I want to speak about this quietly — the way we speak about places that still breathe.I spent time at Wounded Knee in 20...
12/22/2025

I want to speak about this quietly — the way we speak about places that still breathe.

I spent time at Wounded Knee in 2017. Not as a visitor checking a box, not as someone chasing history, but as a human being standing on ground that has never stopped remembering.

You don’t arrive there and feel finished.
You arrive and feel interrupted.

The land does not tell the story the way textbooks do. It doesn’t explain itself. It holds its breath. The wind moves differently. The silence has weight. You feel watched — not in fear, but in responsibility.

At Wounded Knee, you understand something very clearly:
this was never just an “event.”
It was a wound that stayed open because the world kept stepping over it.

So when I read that the President signed the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act into law on December 19, 2025, my first reaction was not celebration. It was stillness.

Because protection, when it comes this late, is not about triumph.
It’s about finally stopping the bleeding.

Placing that land into restricted fee status under the care of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe matters — not symbolically, but materially. It means the land cannot be sold off quietly. It means it cannot be taxed, carved up, or repurposed by people who don’t carry its memory. It means jurisdiction returns to those whose ancestors were left in the snow.

The land sits within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, but more importantly, it sits within Lakota time — not federal time, not market time, not political time. Ceremony time.

I remember standing there in 2017, realizing that Wounded Knee is not only about death. It is about restraint. About what happens when the world refuses to listen and chooses force instead. About how easily governments call violence “order” and grief “history.”

This law does one important thing:
it stops pretending the land is neutral.

By designating it strictly as a memorial and sacred site — with no gaming, no development, no extraction — it acknowledges something Indigenous peoples have said all along: some places are not resources. They are responsibilities.

This doesn’t erase the massacre.
It doesn’t settle the debt.
It doesn’t heal the wound on its own.

But it does something necessary.

It says: this ground will no longer be argued over as property.
It says: the dead will not be negotiated again.

And for a place like Wounded Knee, that matters.

Because memory needs boundaries.
And respect sometimes looks like finally stepping back and letting the land be held by those who have always known how to listen to it.

—Kanipawit Maskwa
Standing Bear Network





The winter solstice is not a celebration of light arriving early.It is an honoring of the longest night.Our people under...
12/22/2025

The winter solstice is not a celebration of light arriving early.
It is an honoring of the longest night.

Our people understood this deeply.

This is the moment when the world grows quiet enough to hear itself breathing. The trees stand still. The animals conserve their steps. The rivers slow under ice, not because they are dying—but because they are remembering how to endure.

The solstice teaches patience.

Nothing is being rushed back into bloom. There is no demand for growth yet. The earth is saying: rest with me. Sit in the dark without panic. Trust that the turning will come.

In our ways, darkness is not failure.
Darkness is the womb.

This is where prayers are formed before they have words. Where grief is allowed to sit beside the fire without explanation. Where ancestors feel closer, because the noise of the world has finally softened.

We do not conquer this night.
We keep watch through it.

A small flame. A steady breath. A promise made quietly to ourselves that we will remain present—no matter how long the cold lasts.

And then, almost imperceptibly, the light begins its return. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just enough to remind us that balance is always moving, even when it feels still.

Kîsikâw pîsim—
the day the sun turns back toward us.

Until then, we listen.
We rest.
We remember who we are when there is nothing left to perform.

Kisâkihitinawâw, relatives.

—Kanipawit Maskwa





12/21/2025

Christmas is coming.

For those who are carrying more than they can name—
you are not alone.

12/19/2025

Listening more than speaking.

Kisâkihitinawâw, relatives.Some days the medicine is quiet.We still show up.Ekwa. 🤍
12/15/2025

Kisâkihitinawâw, relatives.

Some days the medicine is quiet.
We still show up.

Ekwa. 🤍

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