Beginning in 1898, William A. Edwards, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania began a lifelong personal relationship with many native families of the Pine Ridge & Rosebud Indian Reservations located in South Western South Dakota. For better than half a century, each summer saw Edwards travel west where he deepened powerful relationships while living among his celebrated Indian friends.
During those years, he was not only accepted as one of their own, but also adopted into three Lakota family kinships, Jacob Hastings Goodshot, Shields Thunderbull and Edward Eagleheart. Here, Edwards was brought into a cultural learning environment where he was groomed and taught what it meant to be an Indian, in a traditional Lakota sense.
At the end of Edward's years (1960), the reins to his associations were then turned over to yet another Pittsburgher.
During the spring of 1976. John E. Connolly received a major part of Edward's many years of assembling and collecting: correspondence, photographs, written notes, and artifacts from a by gone era. Within this massive amount of history came a strong sense of responsibility for Connolly to take up where his colleague had left off. Hence, within this same year, he began a 40 year commitment which continues to grow stronger even to this day.
During the last quarter of a century, two successive companies have been established; Connolly and Notle Associates, which operated between 1976 and 1986 and the most recent Warriors of the Lakota enacted in 2002. Both companies sponsor cultural and societal efforts to assist the Lakota people in stabilizing their life-ways.
Today the Warriors of the Lakota, movement is poised and will offer better ways for taking this nation one step closer to fulfilling their dreams... Today the Lakota star is rising.
