FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 22, 2025
Rapid City, SD – Today, NDN Collective announced Wizipan Little Elk Garriott will serve as the organization’s new president. Founder Nick Tilsen will continue to serve as CEO.
Wizipan Little Elk Garriott is Sicangu Lakota and has served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2021 – 2024. In this role, he served as the first assistant and principal advisor to the Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs, in the development and interpretation of policies affecting Indian Affairs bureaus, offices, and programs.
Prior to his appointment in the U.S. Department of the Interior, Mr. Garriott served as chief executive officer from 2012-2021 of the Rosebud Economic Development Corporation, an ecosystem of Tribal organizations serving the Rosebud Indian Reservation. In this capacity, Mr. Garriott led and started community-based businesses and programs, including a Native language immersion school and a 1,200-head buffalo herd.
Mr. Garriott was born and raised on the Rosebud Indian Reservation where he attended St. Francis Indian School, a Bureau of Indian Affairs (now Bureau of Indian Education) school. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies from Yale University and received his Juris Doctor degree in 2008 from the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College. He is a husband and father, and deeply devoted to his culture and spirituality.
“The opportunity to continue to work on behalf of Indian country at NDN Collective is a blessing,” said Wizipan Little Elk Garriott, NDN Collective President. “I’m honored to join such an amazing team driving and connecting grassroots, on-the-ground work with national movements and policies.”
“Wizipan’s experience and leadership comes at the right moment for NDN and the work we all care about. Our people and our land are at the heart of it all,” said Gaby Strong, NDN Collective Vice-President. “Wizipan has that same heart for the work with the wisdom and experience to back it up. There’s synergy and evolution in our organizational growth and our collective movement. Wizi joins us as part of that.”
“Wizipan’s combined experience of working deeply in his own community on grassroots and tribal solutions, all the way to working in two presidential administrations will prove to be catalytic for the work here at NDN Collective,” said Nick Tilsen, NDN Collective Founder & CEO. “Wizipan is a dynamic, proven high integrity community and national leader. I couldn’t be more honored to be working by his side to build collective power for our people and to protect Mother Earth. His dedication to fighting for tribal sovereignty and indigenous self determination is second to none.”
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NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.