Ending Poverty in Native Communities: A Moral Responsibility

Six of the eleven poorest counties in all of America are in South Dakota, and they are all on Indian reservations. The poverty in these communities is historic, isolated, generational poverty, largely out of sight and out of mind to mainstream American society.

In the past, the Oglala Lakota Nation – of which I am a citizen – had strong, sustainable regional economies that were built around a nomadic lifestyle of hunting buffalo, stewarding the land, and managing sophisticated societal and democratic governance structures. The people no longer hunt the buffalo, but we are still here and a sustainable, resilient community is still possible. It is a moral responsibility to build a culture of innovation in and around Indian Country.

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