Finding innovation in traditional values
Summary
TLDRThe speaker shares a powerful narrative on the challenges faced by Native American communities, particularly in economic development, and the importance of embracing indigenous cultures as a solution rather than a problem. She recounts the history of forced assimilation through boarding schools and the negative impact of top-down, one-size-fits-all federal funding approaches. The speaker highlights her own journey in developing a culturally appropriate economic model, which led to successful projects such as the Cheyenne River Buffalo project, demonstrating a multifaceted approach to community development that addresses economic, cultural, and environmental needs. She emphasizes the interconnectedness within communities and the emergent nature of prosperity, advocating for a collaborative and respectful integration of indigenous worldviews to create a healthy and prosperous society.
Takeaways
- đ The Indian boarding school era (1879-1970s) aimed to 'kill the Indian to save the man' by forcibly removing children from their families and suppressing their culture, language, and names.
- đŒ Economic development in Native American communities began in 1978 with a focus on competition over cooperation, which was contrary to their traditional values.
- đŠ A humorous idea of starting an 'Indian whack a mole' business led to a serious discussion and the creation of a profitable hunting permit system for controlling prairie dog populations.
- đš A miscommunication with the Bureau of Indian Affairs resulted in funding for a 120-unit motel instead of the requested 10 cabins, highlighting the disconnect between federal funding and community needs.
- đ« The failure of the federally-funded motel project underscored the issue with top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions that ignore local knowledge and community-driven solutions.
- đ± The speaker's approach to economic development involves listening to the community, following their problem-solving methods, and tapping into their inherent brilliance.
- đ A successful project reintroducing buffalo to the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation not only increased household income but also had conservation, cultural, and youth development benefits.
- đł The buffalo project demonstrated how interconnectedness within a community can lead to prosperity, as the buffalo's reintroduction improved the ecosystem and supported various community sectors.
- đ The concept of prosperity as an emergent property suggests that a society's wealth arises from the health of its relationships, society, and ecosystem, not just from profitable businesses.
- đ± International work with indigenous communities has shown that small grants can have a significant impact, with communities raising much more funding than they received in grants.
- đ The Cheyenne River Buffalo project was recognized with the Newsweek hero of the Year award, highlighting the transformative potential of community-led initiatives.
- đ€ The speaker challenges the audience to consider the value of different worldviews and the innovation that can come from combining diverse perspectives to create a healthy and prosperous society.
Q & A
What was the duration of the infamous Indian boarding school era?
-The Indian boarding school era ran from 1879 into the 1970s, lasting approximately 100 years.
Who was the army officer responsible for building one of the first Indian boarding schools?
-One of the first Indian boarding schools was built by army officer Richard Pratt in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
What was the purpose of the Indian boarding schools according to Richard Pratt?
-Richard Pratt stated that the purpose of the schools was to 'kill the Indian in him, and save the man', meaning to suppress Native American culture and assimilate the children into white society.
What was the speaker's role in economic development on the Pine Ridge Reservation?
-The speaker was the first Native American and the first woman to do economic development work on the Pine Ridge Reservation, focusing on culturally appropriate methods.
How did the speaker's tribe initially generate profit on the Pine Ridge Reservation?
-The tribe generated profit by issuing hunting permits for prairie dogs on the reservation, which brought in $45,000 in the first year.
What was the outcome of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' prairie dog eradication program?
-The eradication program, which used DDT, eliminated nearly all of the prairie dogs and much of the local wildlife, disrupting the tribe's primary method of controlling prairie dog populations.
Why did the tribe decide to build a motel on the reservation?
-The tribe received federal funding intended for a 120-unit motel and, despite the lack of a clear market, decided to build it in a remote village on the reservation.
What was the speaker's realization about the problem with top-down, one-size-fits-all federal funding?
-The speaker realized that top-down federal funding denied local ownership and the innate brilliance in communities, leading to projects that failed to meet the actual needs and potential of the communities.
How did the speaker approach economic development in indigenous communities?
-The speaker advocated for listening to the communities, following their problem-solving methods, and tapping into their innate brilliance to develop projects that were culturally appropriate and effective.
What was the impact of reintroducing buffalo to the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation?
-The reintroduction of buffalo led to increased household income, conservation efforts, cultural revitalization, and even benefits for local wildlife such as the black-footed ferret and the meadowlark.
What was the speaker's challenge to the TED MED community?
-The speaker challenged the TED MED community to remember the connectivity and interdependence of relationships, and to combine different worldviews to create a healthy and prosperous society.
Outlines
đ Forcible Assimilation and Economic Development on Native American Reservations
The first paragraph discusses the dark history of Native American boarding schools, which aimed to eradicate Native American culture from 1879 to the 1970s. It highlights the efforts of Richard Pratt and the forced assimilation of Native children. The speaker then transitions to their own experiences with economic development on the Pine Ridge Reservation, emphasizing the challenges faced by Native communities and the innovative approach of turning prairie dog hunting into a profitable business. The paragraph concludes with the ironic story of receiving a grant for a 120-unit motel instead of the needed 10 cabins, leading to a failed business venture that reinforced negative stereotypes about Native Americans in business.
đż The Impact of Federal Programs on Wildlife and a Solution-Led Approach
The second paragraph delves into the consequences of a federal prairie dog eradication program that devastated local wildlife and disrupted the community's traditional hunting practices. It details the failed attempt to build a profitable motel and the subsequent realization that federal funding models were not conducive to local success. The speaker then shares their pivot to a community-led approach, which involved listening to the community's needs and problem-solving. This led to the successful reintroduction of buffalo to the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation, which had profound economic, environmental, and cultural benefits, including increased household income and the revitalization of native species.
đ Multifaceted Projects and the Emergence of Prosperity
The third paragraph expands on the success of the buffalo project and describes the holistic approach taken by the community, which addressed multiple needs simultaneously. It emphasizes the importance of designing projects with clear goals that benefit the largest number of community members. The speaker also draws parallels between the interconnectedness seen in the community and the concept of health as an emergent property. The narrative then shifts to the international work with indigenous communities, highlighting the significant impact of small grants and the empowerment of grassroots groups. The speaker argues that prosperity is also an emergent property and that addressing larger systemic issues is crucial for a healthy and prosperous society.
đ Indigenous Wisdom and the Path to a Healthier, Prosperous Society
In the final paragraph, the speaker reflects on the pride in their culture and challenges the notion that indigenous worldviews are problematic. They invoke Einstein's idea that the same consciousness that creates a problem cannot solve it, suggesting that indigenous perspectives offer unique solutions. The speaker calls for a recognition of the connectivity and interdependence inherent in indigenous cultures and proposes that combining these worldviews with Western approaches can lead to innovative solutions. They conclude with a challenge to the audience to remember these principles as they work towards creating a healthier and more prosperous world.
Mindmap
Keywords
đĄIndian boarding schools
đĄCultural erasure
đĄEconomic development
đĄPrairie dogs
đĄFederal funding
đĄLocal ownership
đĄBuffalo reintroduction
đĄIndigenous communities
đĄOne-size-fits-all
đĄSustainability
đĄEmergent property
Highlights
Handcuffs were used on Native American children during the infamous Indian boarding school era from 1879 to the 1970s
Children were forcibly removed from their families and forbidden from practicing their culture
The speaker began her career in culturally appropriate economic development in 1978
She was the first Native American and first woman doing economic development at the time
She worked on economic development in South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the poorest counties in the US
The tribe started a profitable hunting permit business by charging local hunters to hunt prairie dogs
They received federal funding to build 10 hunting cabins, but mistakenly got funding for a 120 unit motel instead
The motel was built in a remote location with no customers, symbolizing perceived Native American business failures
The speaker realized top-down, one-size-fits-all federal funding denied local ownership and problem-solving
She started listening to indigenous communities' ideas and solutions for economic development
One project reintroduced buffalo to a reservation, providing economic, conservation, cultural and youth benefits
The project was funded by the speaker's organization and later received national recognition
Indigenous projects designed to meet the most needs for the most community members were very successful
The speaker's organization has made 250 grants in 58 countries, directly impacting 600 indigenous communities
Many of the funded projects combined traditional and modern techniques in healthcare, agriculture, etc.
The speaker argues that prosperity, like health, is an emergent property that cannot be achieved through a linear model
She calls for combining diverse worldviews and indigenous knowledge to create a healthy, prosperous society
Transcripts
these are handcuffs for Native American
children during the infamous Indian
boarding school era which ran from 1879
into the 1970s 100 years 490 schools one
of the first schools was built right out
here by Carlisle Pennsylvania my army
officer Richard Pratt who in his
inaugural speech said that the purpose
of the school was that quote all that is
Indian in the race shall be dead kill
off the Indian to save the man children
were forcibly removed from their
families forbidden from using their
given names speaking their language or
practicing their culture I began
economic development in 1978 and while
it was development and not education the
Carlyle conventional thinking was still
very much alive everyone knew that
Indians valued cooperation over
competition and they all knew we shared
too much so clearly the only way Indian
people were going to succeed in business
was to get rid of the Indian Asst this
began my career in culturally
appropriate economic development I was
the first Native American and the first
woman doing economic development back
then which basically meant I could write
federal proposals and get federal
funding I was off to South Dakota to the
Pine Ridge Reservation to do economic
development when I got there Pine Ridge
is also Shannon County which is Shannon
County in South Dakota had been the
poorest County in the
United States for the past 60 years of
the ten poorest counties in this country
six of them are Indian reservations when
you get to Pine Ridge what you see is
prairie vast vast Prairie as you look
out over the horizon what you also see
are prairie dogs some of those prairie
dog towns had between 300 and 500
thousand prairie dogs all making more
prairie dogs by every economic
conventional standard there was nothing
to develop except every weekend all the
local hunters would pile in their cars
drive out to the reservation and target
practice with the prairie dogs
it was the tribes main way of keeping
the population of prairie dogs from over
running the reservation but we had a
standing joke in the tribe where one of
these days we were going to get really
rich starting an Indian whack Amole
business so one day I'm sitting in the
tribal council meeting and the Parks and
Recreation Director comes in and we
start talking about the Indian whack
Amole business I mean it we came up
every meeting this time we really talked
about it seriously in the tribe passed a
hunting code and we issued hunting
permits $50 a person per season
we made $45,000 profit that first year
and it was the first time ever the tribe
had a profitable business I polished up
our financials got the statements ready
did the trick trajectory of profits and
off to DC we went because we wanted to
have 10 hunting cabins for the
out-of-state hunters so we go to the
Bureau of Indian Affairs by showing my
charts of profit and we explain how with
the tent cabins we're really gonna be
able to do some spin-off economic
activities too one of the BIA guys jumps
up he says we're funding motels this
year here and he went and got the
application packet he gave it to me and
I don't think we even needed a plane we
were so happy on our way home we just
flew home I got the application packet
went to my office opened it up it was
for 120 unit motel wait a minute we need
10
cabins that's got the wrong packet so I
called the BIA up and I can remember us
we were there that it uh but we had a
120 unit application packet we wanted
ten cabins I said we're only funding 120
unit motels this year Wow why not let's
take a shot at it you know so I put the
proposal together and I'm thinking what
we're gonna need is some really
sophisticated marketing to get this
hotel filled because we don't even have
enough people local or tourists to fill
120 rooms I'm reading down the
application packet and it says marketing
is prohibited and right below that it
says management expenses are dis
allowable about that time the director
of Parks and Recreation walks in and he
said hey the bureau's just launched a
major prairie dog eradication program
and they funded the widespread
application of DDT well they eliminated
all of our prairie dogs and just about
all of our wildlife so there we sat we
had no customers no staff and now we had
no prairie dogs we got the grant right
so I go into the tribe and I say we've
got the funding to build 120 unit motel
so they vote to build the motel in the
most remote village on the reservation
because there's nothing else out there
we build the motel in there it sets
empty because there's nothing else out
there to the outsider this just looks
like one more monument of failure proof
that Indians can't do business like the
hundreds of hotels
I mean motels shopping centers and
marinas built by federal funds and
scattered across Indian country but how
did we fail we didn't want the motel in
the first place yet there it stood a
constant reinforcement to a psychology
of failure directed right the blame
directed right at the core of my values
my
beliefs and my culture I could not
accept that my culture was the problem
federal funding was the problem that
top-down take one-size-fits-all was the
problem it denied any kind of local
ownership it denied the innate
brilliance in our communities our own
problem-solving so I went to foundations
and I said our communities need economic
development and they said well what are
you gonna do I said I'm gonna listen to
them I'm gonna follow their
problem-solving I'm going to tap into
their brilliance see ya but what are you
gonna do
how we gonna fund you if you don't know
what you're gonna do I'm saying say I
didn't know what I was gonna do I said
we were gonna listen finally I had this
empathetic program officer pulled me
aside and she says Rebecca tell us
you've got a multi-faceted strategic
planning process so next time I get the
question I have a multi-faceted
strategic planning process got the grant
and one of our first projects one of our
first projects really was on the
Cheyenne River Sioux again on South
Dakota and they had come to us and they
wanted to reintroduce the Buffalo to the
reservation now because of long-standing
historic inheritance legislation on a
reservation you might have a part of
land that your family's interest is in
that land but there's 6,000 other heirs
to that same parcel of land and those
interests are undivided so to get around
this undivided interest land ownership
pattern we have on the reservations the
tribe said if you commit your interests
to the common grazing for the buffalo
herd you'll get a calf now calf is worth
six hundred and forty dollars on the
hoof and you have the choice you could
leave the calf with the herd and it
could grow and if it was when it became
a cow or a bull it became worth anywhere
between 1600 to 2400 dollars
on the market in a community where the
family's average annual income is four
thousand and eighty dollars a year this
represents between a fifteen to fifty
percent increase in household income but
a lot more was happening
the Buffalo were eating the natural
grasses and habitat grew back the black
footed black footed ferret and the
Meadowlark returned and when the herd
grew in size the medicine man was called
in in order that we could call the herd
and reduce the numbers again take the
carrying capacity the medicine man
assured that all of the buffalo killing
would follow the strictest of ritual and
ceremony and guarantee that none of it
would be wasted the skull the bones the
hides went to the artists the meat was
chopped up and sent to the elderly
center to the elderly programs into the
school lunch programs even the juvenile
courts sentenced the youth to go study
the Buffalo Nation because the belief
was Lakota Nation had modeled themselves
after the Buffalo Nation so we had an
economic development project generating
income increasing household income we
had a conservation and endangered
species project we had a cultural
project we had a youth we had an arts
and crafts project and we had a youth
project and we would go to the
foundations to get funding they'd say
well we couldn't get a single foundation
to fund it they'd say well is it a youth
project or is it a cultural project is
an economic project or is a conservation
project and I go yeah finally out of
frustration we took our own internal
funding and we funded it 30 months later
the executive director of the Cheyenne
River Buffalo project was awarded the
Newsweek hero of the Year award not for
just what the project was doing on the
reservation but for the impact it had
within the entire state something very
interesting was happening in these
projects
across the board people were designing
the projects in a way that the goal was
clear the goal was to meet the highest
number of needs for the maximum number
of people in the community I want to say
that again because this goal was in
every single project that came in as it
was designed by the communities to meet
the most needs for the maximum number of
members in the community look at these
maps they're done by the University of
Alaska sociology department and they
went out to the same Inupiat village up
in Alaska the one map shows the
distribution after a whale hunt of all
of the places that the whale meat is
distributed within the Inupiat village
it shows the vibrant linkages and the
connections in the interconnections and
the interconnections within the
community within the family within the
clan and among the communities now the
other map on the sand on the other side
is the same Inupiat village and it maps
cache and all the points that cache is
distributed within the community but
what we were seeing in this was telling
us something not just the maps and not
just the buffalo project but there was
something we were finding here about
this interconnectivity and how
prosperity emerges and how these
projects were being designed that I
think have parallels within the
healthcare system medical science is
already saying that health is an
emergent property it emerges you cannot
cure the individual in isolation a
healthy individual emerges from a
healthy relationship with a healthy
society within a healthy ecosystem well
I submit to you that prosperity is an
emergent property there is no collection
of profitable businesses that will make
a profit prosperous society the economy
with its linear input-output model will
fail unless it addresses
fixes the larger problem we began
working internationally with indigenous
communities in 1997-98 making grants
directly to grassroots indigenous groups
around the world some of our projects we
funded traditional snakebite healers
collecting anti-venom in Sri Lanka we
funded the blending of traditional and
modern agricultural techniques in Sierra
Leone we've even funded the
revitalization of spiritual pilgrimages
in Mountain basa and Malaysia our grants
are small our success is huge we make
250 grants we've made 250 grants to in
58 countries directly impacting 600
indigenous communities one-third of our
grantees one-third of our communities
are so grassroots they had never ever
received funding before we've given away
a total of 1.7 million dollars and these
communities have raised 16 million
dollars in brand-new funding I'm not
here to tell you that we have to abandon
Western ways of doing business and Aid I
am here to tell you today with a
tremendous sense of pride that my
culture is not the problem
Einstein once said that no problem will
be created by the same consciousness but
no problem will be solved by the same
consciousness that created it there's a
lot to learn from indigenous peoples
ways of understanding and relating to
the world society today faces challenges
of epic proportion we cannot afford to
handcuff entire worldviews and eliminate
them for our search in our search for
solutions the TED med community is a
robust community dedicated to
imagination and innovation well imagine
what combining all the new all the
worldviews could innovate
just imagine the innovation from
different worldviews my challenge to you
today is as you go forth
remember the connectivity to the
relationships remember the
interdependence remember our relations
and we can join our worldviews and we
can create and what will emerge is a
healthy prosperous society and world
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