Our History
Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing (OSLH) is a Tribally Designated Housing Entity chartered by the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) in 1998 (reorganizing the Oglala Sioux Housing Authority chartered in 1963). Our mission is to obtain and maintain housing for the people of the Pine Ridge Reservation and assist with improvement of health, safety, and economic prosperity.
OSLH manages and maintains over 1200 low rent unites and has built over 500 home ownership units. OSLH is in the process of developing and building new low rent and home ownership units.
Since 2007 OLC has obtained and operated over $14 million in competitive grants to rehabilitate houses, construct houses, and develop new sites for housing including nine subdivisions in the nine districts of the 3,463 square mile Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. OSLH collaborates with just about every tribal and other organization on the Reservation to improve the quality of life of local residents.
In 2011, Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing celebrated 50 years of providing housing on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. For more information about the history, we encourage you to download “The First 50 Years of Oglala Sioux Housing.”
Our History
Our Mission
Exercising our sovereign and treaty rights, Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Housing will work with communities in a culturally appropriate manner to provide safe, sanitary, and affordable housing to OST members on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We will efficiently utilize any and all resources including those obligated and due us by the United States Government. The primary goal is to provide housing, although secondarily employment and economic development can be a benefit. But, OSLH shall always use the most effective and efficient means to provide housing.
Our Purpose
We function on a three-tiered primary purpose, which is to:
- Remedy the unsafe and unsanitary housing conditions that are injurious to public health, safety, and morals.
- Alleviate the acute shortage of decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings for persons of low income.
- Assist persons of all income levels to obtain good and decent housing at a fair and reasonable cost.
Our secondary purpose is to provide employment and economic development opportunities through the construction, reconstruction, improvement, extension, alteration, or repair and operation of housing.
Values
The key values of the Oglala Lakota Oyate are demonstrated through the following quotes:
By lifting our vision, the petty quarrels of our daily existence will be overcome by a view of our future and our communities will emerge as sacred places.
–Vine Deloria, Jr.
I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.
–Loneman, Teton Lakota
The purpose is to achieve Wolakolkiciyapi – “mutual respect, cooperation and understanding with everyone working toward one goal.”
–Calvin Jumping Bull.
You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round… The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so is everything where power moves.
–Black Elk, Oglala Lakota