Support Native Hope's Homes for the Holidays Campaign

Brian Perry

During this season of giving and sharing, Colors of Influence will highlight a nonprofit campaign every week until the end of the year. This week, we're highlighting a Native Hope campaign to rehabilitate homes in South Dakota so they may be move-in ready for Native families experiencing homelessness.

Right now, there are 72 families on the Crow Creek Reservation without a home. On this same reservation are 16 homes contaminated by meth that now sit empty and boarded up, awaiting funding and renovations to make the home livable.

Native Hope, based in South Dakota, funds programs that provide education, protect youth, and honor cultural heritage. The Home for the Holidays campaign is led by Brian Perry, ambassador and program coordinator. A resident of South Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, a Desert Storm Era Veteran, and a direct descendant of Winchester Colbert, second governor of the Chickasaw Nation.

South Dakota is home of nine Native American Indian reservations where some of the highest poverty in our nation exists. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley proclaimed that the state is under a methamphetamine epidemic. The Department of Justice has reported that Native Americans have the highest rates of meth abuse in the nation.

This holiday season, Native Hope is partnering with the Crow Creek Tribal Housing Authority and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to renovate these homes and provide housing for homeless Native families. You can help fight the devastation of meth in Native communities by donating to the campaign, which seeks to raise $24,000 to fix four homes.

“The level of abuse and neglect associated with meth is staggering and heart-wrenching. Meth use is destroying entire generations of Native Americans,” said Amy Proctor, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and a member of the Cherokee Nation.

Native Hope's goal is to repair the condemned homes on the Crow Creek Reservation that stand empty due to meth use in the homes. The families contributing to the contamination have been displaced, and 72 families who need a home are on the waiting list—waiting for the funding for these homes to be repaired. Each family waiting completes an application and background check, and waits for a home, free of meth.

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