Thank You and Happy Holidays

From all of us at PWNA, we’d like to wish you — our program partners, community project leaders, volunteers, donors and organizations who support our work — a happy holiday season. In working together year-round, we’re ensuring a better quality of life for those living in remote, and often forgotten, Native American communities.

Your support is critical to assist our partners in spreading holiday cheer at a time of year that can otherwise be stressful and lonely for some. Across 110 different reservation communities this year, our partners and their volunteers are busy preparing for community-wide meals, distributions of useful gifts and numerous Santa stops. Food and gifts are provided through Northern Plains Reservation Aid, Southwest Reservation Aid and other programs of PWNA.

Holiday meals offer partners a special opportunity to bring community members together and ensure Elders, families and children receive a warm, healthy meal free of financial stress and in the company of others. This year, PWNA will support holiday meals for tribes in the Southwest and Northern Plains, including:

• Hopi in Moenkopi, AZ
• White Mountain Apache in Fort Apache, AZ
• Navajo in Fort Defiance, AZ, Cove, AZ and Shiprock, NM
• Standing Rock Sioux in Cannonball, ND
• Cheyenne River Sioux in Howes, SD
• Northern Cheyenne in Busby, MT
• Ponca in Norfolk, NE
• Oglala Sioux in Porcupine, SD

Gift bag distributions are intended to help honor Native American Elders in individual communities. This year, we’re delivering gift bags with essential items for Navajo Elders in Bluff, UT and the remote community of Hogback, NM, as well as the Elders in Pueblo of Pojoaque, NM, the Oglala Elders in Porcupine, SD and Allen, SD, and the Northern Cheyenne Elders in Lame Deer, MT and Ashland, MT, among others.

Our holiday stocking distributions celebrate children and help our partners create positive events in their communities, while providing practical items for families. This year, PWNA will deliver holiday stockings for children in the San Carlos, Hopi, Navajo, Pine Ridge, and Omaha communities, and more. We will also deliver stockings for children on the Crow and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota, the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska, the Nambe and Santa Clara pueblos in New Mexico, and the Cocopah Reservation in Arizona, to name a few. Children in some of these communities will also delight in a visit from Santa as part of our Santa Stop service.

As part of our commitment to students who receive our American Indian Education Fund (AIEF) program scholarships, we provide them and their immediate family members with useful holiday gifts with the intent to remove any added stress for scholars and help them focus on successfully completing their first semester.

Our program partners, such as these, can best share how PWNA’s support can impact communities during the holidays:

“I can’t tell you how much our children appreciated the Christmas items you sent us. Many of the children would not have received anything if they had not received the stockings…They were really great. The children especially like the stuffed animals and the coloring books. Thank you very much.” – Mel (Pine Ridge)

“On behalf of our community, I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to PWNA and to those who so generously donated the Christmas stockings to our community. Because of your time, effort, hard work and dedication to Native American communities, you have made our Christmas a joyous one to remember. Again, thank you very much.” – Joseph (Yankton)

PWNA is grateful for the many relationships and collaborations that help us brighten the holidays for tribal citizens and enable us to be one of the largest Native American-serving organizations in the U.S. The Native communities we serve have the highest need in the U.S. and everything we do is only possible through the generosity of individuals like you who care about others. We’re fortunate and humbled to have your support year-round and especially through your year-end giving.