10/16/2026
We are honored that Sikowis Nobiss, ED of Great Plains Action Society, will give the Keynote for the QEW Fall Gathering this coming Friday at Prairiewoods Franciscan Retreat Center, in Hiawatha, Iowa and online!
We're hoping you can join us as she shares on the topic of rematriation, landback, and decolonization as we reflect on our theme "The Fires that Renew."
To register go to: https://secure.quakerearthcare.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=212
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Inside a canvas tent pitched on 14 acres of land in Williamsburg, Iowa, Sikowis Nobiss sat before a camera, the ambient sounds of goats, roosters, and a stiff Midwestern breeze bleeding through the fabric walls.
It was April 2017, and deep in the nearby woods, a sacred fire had been burning continuously since late February. She had founded Little Creek Camp as a sanctuary for water protectors recovering from the freezing, militarized evictions at Standing Rock, but also as a new frontline against the Dakota Access Pipeline's march across her home state. Running the camp was a massive, all-consuming undertaking that kept her separated from her two children—a sacrifice she made to ensure they would have a living planet to inherit. Looking into the lens of a visiting journalist, her exhaustion was visible, but so was her ironclad resolve: "This is more than a cause to me," she stated plainly. "This is a lifestyle that I will never give up. I will never change what I'm doing. This is what I will be doing for the rest of my life."
For Sikowis (Plains Cree-Saulteaux of the George Gordon First Nation), those words spoken in the damp chill of an Iowa spring were to echo through her life in the years ahead. At Little Creek, she founded the Great Plains Action Society, transforming frontline trauma into a lifelong crusade to dismantle colonial-capitalist systems and rematriate the earth.