The Cheyenne River Youth Project will host its 13th annual Harvest Festival Dinner on Friday, Oct. 17, at its Eagle Butte campus. Presented in partnership with the Native Food Sovereignty Alliance, the free community event will take place from 5 to 7:30 p.m.
This year marks a milestone for the nonprofit youth organization and its Winyan Toka Win (Leading Lady) Garden—the nearly 3-acre plot that serves as the heart of CRYP’s Native food sovereignty programming and social enterprises. The garden is celebrating 25 years as part of CRYP and 50 years of growing food on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation.
What: 13th Annual Harvest Festival Dinner
When: 5-7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 17, 2025
Where: CRYP’s Cokata Wiconi (Center of Life) Teen Center, 702 4th St., Eagle Butte
Schedule:
5 p.m.: Welcome and smudge
5:05 p.m.: Dinner service begins
6 p.m.: Teen intern honoring, garden wopila, and dance exhibition
6:30 p.m.: Recipe sharing
Activities will take place in the Cokata Wiconi (Center of Life) Teen Center gymnasium and in the Waniyetu Wowapi (Winter Count) Art Park. Guests can enjoy music, games, traditional Lakota dancing, and plenty of food.
“We’ll welcome everyone with a drum circle and smudge, and then immediately start serving our Harvest Festival meal,” said Jerica Widow Jones, CRYP’s programs director. “Afterward, we’ll honor our teens who completed the Native Food Sovereignty Internship and recognize them for their dedication and hard work throughout the growing season.
“We also will offer our gratitude to Unci Makhá (Grandmother Earth) and the Winyan Toka Win garden,” she continued. “The evening will conclude with traditional Lakota music and dancing, as well as recipe-sharing with families. We want to give everyone some easy, fun ideas for healthy meals they can make together at home.”
As always, a major highlight of the evening will be the dinner buffet in CRYP’s gymnasium, as menu items incorporate fresh, organically grown, local produce from CRYP’s Winyan Toka Win (Leading Lady) Garden.
On the menu: turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, baked chicken drumsticks, baked spaghetti, burger soup, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, green bean salad, carrots, and roasted vegetables, including corn, zucchini, beans, and squash. Water, iced tea with sugar and lemon, lemonade, and chokecherry lemonade will be available as well.
“And for dessert, we will be serving [Chief Executive Officer] Julie Garreau’s famous bread pudding, along with pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting,” Jones said.
About the Winyan Toka Win Garden
Each year, CRYP’s Winyan Toka Win Garden produces 6,000 to 10,000 pounds of fresh, pesticide-free produce. This food supports daily meals and snacks at Cokata Wiconi and “The Main,” CRYP’s youth center for 4- to 12-year-olds, and it’s also sold through the Keya Gift Shop.
The garden doubles as an outdoor classroom for youth programs, including Garden Club for younger children and the Native Food Sovereignty Internship for teens, during which they gain 40 to 50 hours of hands-on experience in planting, cultivation, harvesting, processing, and preservation—learning traditional Lakota values and lifeways along the way.
The garden’s origins trace back to 1975, when Iyonne Garreau, mother of CRYP CEO Julie Garreau and the longtime director of the CRST Elderly Nutrition Center, envisioned a community garden. She heard elders expressing their desire for traditional foods and their firm belief that Lakota children must reconnect with Unci Makhá.
“She approached tribal government, and with their support, she arranged to have a north-south plot on the west side of the nutrition center,” Garreau said. “My mother always strived for Native food sovereignty and security. She felt community gardens would begin to solve the many health issues we have as Native people.
“She stressed the importance of fresh produce in a daily diet, the significance of traditional foods, and the powerful relationships that a garden can foster between generations as well as between our people and the earth,” she continued.
CRYP took on garden operations in 2000, naming it Winyan Toka Win in honor of Iyonne Garreau. The upcoming Harvest Festival Dinner will serve as a living testament to her vision, to the wishes of the elders a half century ago, and to the generations who continue to nurture the garden today.
To learn more about the Cheyenne River Youth Project and its programs, and for information about making donations and volunteering, call (605) 964-8200 or visit www.lakotayouth.org. And, to stay up to date on the latest CRYP news and events, follow the youth project on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Vimeo and YouTube.
The Cheyenne River Youth Project, founded in 1988, is a grassroots, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing the youth of the Cheyenne River reservation with access to a vibrant and secure future through a wide variety of culturally sensitive and enduring programs, projects and facilities that ensure strong, self-sufficient families and communities.