Community Calendar

On Sunday, June 29, 2025, Michael Wanbdi Gdeska O’Connor (Spotted Eagle) will present “Relation with Creation,” a way of looking at everything as a relation and creating a way of life. Admission is free with a reception to follow.

Lakota/Dakota/Nakota people have a way of life that connects closely with all of creation, all of Mother Nature, and all beings that exist on Grandmother Earth and in the sky world. They refer to all of these members of creation as relatives. As they are seen as relatives, they are treated as such. O’Connor will also share about the sacred way of what is commonly referred to as smudging, about the importance of eagle feathers, and of prayer and the use of the drum and prayer song.

O’Connor is an enrolled member of the Ihanktonwan Oyate (Yankton Sioux Tribe). He is a graduate of Sinte Gleska University. He grew up in both South Dakota and Sioux City and has a very personal and spiritual connection to the Sioux City community and its area lands and rivers.

For 10 years O’Connor has led a local volunteer group through the Sioux City Adopt a Park program dedicated to keeping Sioux City`s War Eagle Park garbage and litter free. He has specialized for many years working with tribal people in various capacities, most recently as Program Director for Cultural Mentoring at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. He has also devoted many years working as a volunteer mentor for those with addictions problems and currently volunteers with a national Native American/Indigenous organization facilitating online Talking Circles.

He is an artist and currently working on a book. He has been a featured speaker and presenter on the national and local level in both in person and online events as well as many guest appearances on podcasts, and guest correspondent on national media news coverage related to Indigenous people's activism and advocacy. He is currently working to provide culturally related lyrics for a Native American/Indigenous female musician and currently serve as a Cultural Coordinator for a non-profit where he leads Talking Circles and teaches cultural relevant classes.

On Sunday, July 6, 2025, at 2:00pm, the Betty Strong Encounter Center welcomes Nancy Lael Braun who will share “Heading Out: A Walk in Poetry.” No admission charge, but freewill donations encouraged.

Braun says that the idea of heading out can apply to a walk in the physical world or a journey of spiritual introspection and discovery or an act of uprooting one’s life to pursue a new direction.

She will be reading poetry from three collections: The poems of Heading Out spring from the simple activity of walking, which the poet says, “has saved her and formed her and given her gifts beyond measure.” The unsentimental poetry in her second collection A Puddle as Big as the Yard was inspired by watching a child grow and the experience of being a grandparent. The third poems in Fasting Slowly reflect a self-examination sparked by the spiritual practice of fasting with honesty, questioning, and humor.

Braun is a life-long Midwesterner, currently splitting her time between Lone Tree, Iowa, and Sioux City, Iowa. Her poems have appeared in Aquifer: Florida Review Online, Barbaric Yawp, Big Muddy, Briar Cliff Review, Iowa City: Poetry in Public, Passager, Pasque Petals, Persimmon Tree, and TSR: The Southampton Review.