Standing Rock Community Development Corporation has adopted Seven Stones Corp as its public-facing trade name and DBA, marking a new chapter for the Indigenous-led 501(c)(3) founded in December 2016.
The legal organization remains Standing Rock Community Development Corporation. Its federal tax-exempt status, Employer Identification Number, board governance, bylaws, and existing grant agreements continue unchanged. Formal materials will use the combined designation "Standing Rock Community Development Corporation DBA Seven Stones Corp." The Board of Directors approved the trade name on May 6, 2026.
Why Seven Stones
The name comes from the prayer way of the Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta peoples. In our ceremonies, seven stones come first — carried into the fire pit before anything else. Everything we do follows the sevens.
When we pray, we pray to the West, to the North, to the East, to the South. Upward to the sky. Down to Mother Earth. And the seventh is for all the people — all our relations, everyone we carry in prayer.
But there is more than one set of sevens. The Seven Council Fires — the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ — that make up our Sioux Nation. The Seven Sacred Rites given to our people by White Buffalo Calf Woman. And the Seven Grandfather Teachings we hold ourselves to: humility, wisdom, generosity, fortitude, bravery, kin respect, and compassion. Seven is not a symbol we borrowed. It is a pattern our people have carried since the beginning.
We named the corporation Seven Stones because we intend to build the same way. Every board decision, every capital deployment, every partnership is measured against those sevens. When we plan a house at Dream Hills, we plan it seven generations forward. When we open a loan at WITĀYA, we ask whether it strengthens the seventh generation. When we sit our youth in a circle, we teach them that they are the seventh generation their great-great-grandparents prayed for.
The prayer way is not our past. It is our operating pattern — carried into a modern institution built to stand for the generations yet to come.
Three Connected Tools for Community Development
Seven Stones Corp now serves as the nonprofit parent of an integrated group of three Indigenous-led entities. Seven Stones leads community programs, partnerships, grant development, and organizational strategy. WITĖ Development LLC carries the real estate and development work. WITĀYA Financial Solutions is being developed as an Indigenous Community Development Financial Institution intended to expand access to capital.
Built on a Nation's Own Strategy
Every program and project of the organization is an answer to a line in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. The documented shortage of more than a thousand homes anchors the housing work. The Tribe's own analysis naming "no bank" as its first weakness anchors the Constellation's emerging community lender. The half of every dollar that leaves the reservation is why the organization develops community-owned assets that keep value home.
What Ten Years Built
500+ families served. 120+ jobs created. 1,500+ youth empowered. 10+ local nonprofits seeded through fiscal sponsorship — up from two in the community before the corporation opened. $8 million+ in cumulative funding secured. A debt-free real estate portfolio approaching $4 million in current equity. Independently evaluated in 2023 by RMC Research Corporation.
The Emblem Was Never Just an Emblem
Before the corporation had a logo, it had a master plan — and they are the same drawing. In 2017, the founding chairman — Brian Thunder Hawk, now Founder & CEO — sketched a whole community on a planning notepad: four feather-shaped districts for commerce, industry, housing, and food sovereignty, roads running to a cultural center at the middle. A local artist translated the plan into the original seal — the medicine wheel woven in porcupine quills, the four eagle feathers, the roads of yellow dots, and the turtle at the center where every road leads home. A decade later, the drawing is coming true — feather by feather. And a new emblem now stands beside it: Seven Stones arranged in the shape of a turtle's shell — the whole cosmology in a single mark, carrying the founding vision forward.
A Note from the Founder
I founded Standing Rock Community Development Corporation in December of 2016 and received our 501(c)(3) determination in 2017. Before that, I served as Executive Director of the Standing Rock Housing Authority — completing my tenure with a clean federal audit and leading the strategic relationship with HUD Washington and HUD Denver that brought the regional HUD conference home to Bismarck in 2016.
Ten years in, my purpose has stayed the same: to help as many people as possible through the institutions we are building. Prayer remains central to how I lead. Seven Stones is built to serve Indigenous families and communities for the generations to come.
— Brian Thunder Hawk, Founder & Chief Executive Officer
The Next Chapter — Housing, Community Space, and Indigenous-Led Capital
Seven Stones is advancing major projects in Cannon Ball and Fort Yates while building a new financial institution intended to expand access to capital.
Wihaŋbda Sa Hills — Cannon Ball
Wihaŋbda Sa Hills — "Dream Hills" in the Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta languages — is a planned 24-acre workforce housing community at 7042 Highway 1806 in Cannon Ball. The first phase proposes workforce rental homes, now in active predevelopment.
At full build-out, the master plan advances toward 108 housing opportunities across rental and homeownership duplexes, mixed-use apartment buildings, retail and convenience space, an Indigenous museum, theater stage, and community amenities. The community's own workforce will help raise the homes their families will live in. The proposal was designed by Anupath Architects.
The WITĖ Southeast Building — Fort Yates
The WITĖ Southeast Building is a proposed four-story mixed-use community hub on Seven Stones-owned land beside the WITĖ Northwest Building — the corporation's headquarters and business incubator — in Fort Yates.
Designed by HKG Architects, the 41,240-square-foot building would place approximately 24 residential units above a ground floor of three business-incubator spaces, a restaurant, retail, a 1,620-square-foot grand lobby, and mechanical core — a future home for the Constellation and its tribal program partners.
Dream Hills · Phased Development Timeline 2026–2033
108 housing opportunities at full build-out — delivered in phases, on land Seven Stones owns. Phase 1 (2026–2028): infrastructure — sewage, roads, sidewalks, curbs. Phase 2 (Spring 2028): the first 9 workforce duplexes (18 units). Phase 3 (2028–2029): the first 36-unit mixed-use apartment with amenities. Phase 4 (2029–2030): gas station, retail, and car wash. Phase 5 (2030–2031): a second 36-unit apartment and Native-owned retail stores. Phase 6 (2031–2033): community park, cultural plaza, museum, and Smart Wellness Center.
Every phase is an answer to a line the Standing Rock Sioux Nation has already written about itself.
WITĀYA Financial Solutions
An Indigenous Community Development Financial Institution in formation. Traditional banks routinely decline financing for reservation-based properties. WITĀYA is being built to answer that structural gap — providing microloans, mortgages, credit-building products, and small-business capital to Indigenous and non-Indigenous families and businesses across the Standing Rock region. Seeded with support from First Nations Oweesta Corporation and the Tamalpais Trust. Currently on the U.S. Treasury CDFI Fund certification track.
A Note from the Co-Founder
When Standing Rock CDC stepped in front of a camera for the first time, in 2019, I spoke first. Before the mission, before the initiatives, before any talk of projects, I gave the organization its first public words: Identity first. Nation first. Everything this organization has built since follows the order of those two sentences — who we are, and who we belong to, before anything we do.
I co-founded SRCDC in the aftermath of the Dakota Access Pipeline movement, when a handful of Standing Rock community members decided that the power we had witnessed in our people deserved permanent institutions. Alongside Brian Thunder Hawk, I helped set the four key initiatives — community development, food sovereignty, youth development, and language and culture — each aligned with a prayer way of life. Seven years later, that founding architecture still stands, grown now into the Seven Stones Constellation.
— Loretta (Grey Day) Bad Heart Bull, Co-Founder, Corporate President & Board Member