Brooklyn Baptiste

Brooklyn Baptiste

Community Outreach Director

"Ke’ulem Lip’it" ~ Two Bulls

My name is “keu’lim Le’piit,”(Kulem La’pit), which is the name I earned in ceremony and my English name given to me at birth is Brooklyn Baptiste. I am 53 years of age and was born in Lewiston, Idaho and an enrolled member of the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho. My late father was Darrel Baptiste of Mission, Oregon, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. My mother is Alexes Baptiste and is an enrolled member of the Nez Perce Tribe. I am a proud father of 4 children, 2 daughters and 2 sons, which I have raised 3 of them in a ceremonial setting as much as possible. We run and host various ceremonies together as a family throughout the year in our home and on our tribal homelands.

 

I have dedicated the last 32 years of my life to learning more about ceremonial life and promoting our own unique indigenous tribal practices and life ways in our own community. I currently work as the Nez Perce Tribes Opioid Response Manager, and I work in prevention, incarceration/restorative justice and treatment and recovery practices within the tribes’ departments. I work a lot with our own tribal youth within the prevention efforts promoting cultural practices to ensure our youth have a broad range opportunities to avoid an unhealthy lifestyle.

 

I was elected to the Nez Perce Tribe Executive Committee (NPTEC) which is the governing body of the tribe in 2005 and served until 2015. While on our council I served as Vice-Chairman and Chairman as well as the Natural Resources subcommittee chairman for several years. I became very familiar with every tribal department under the tribe’s umbrella. I also served as the Environmental and Natural Resources committee chairman for the Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest Indians (ATNI) and Environmental and Natural Resource committee for the National Congress of American Indians. In that time, I was involved in a broad range of legislative issues at a local and national level.

 

In 1994 I lost my older brother and one of my best friends in separate car accidents. Both being alcohol related and from then on, I have dedicated my life to creating a spiritual path in my life and to help others seeking their own spiritual relationship to avoid certain hardships that come with a drug or alcohol fueled lifestyle. I started attending the sundance ceremony with the Ute Mountain Utes in Toac, Co as well as with the Northern Ute tribe in Ft Duchene, UT. As years passed I found myself on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota attending their Lakota sundnace. Its there that I learned more about their specific spiritual practices and was adopted in ceremony by a family there responsible for hosting a sundance. In my time in ceremony across the U.S. and Canada I had the opportunity to meet many more people and spent the past 3 decades in various ceremonies on a continuous spiritual path that has led to the current ceremonies that my family now hosts or runs in our own homelands here on the Nez Perce Reservation. I am currently the leader and am responsible for the Thunder Mountain Sundance held each July here on the Nez Perce Indian reservation.  I continue to promote our own cultural practices and help as many as I can.