Tag Archives: Lakota

An outsourcing vision about the Lakota people

March 4, 2017 by 123outsource
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Watching the news about Standing Rock has depressed me. Watching uranium companies devastate the land in South Dakota in the 1970’s and now watching oil companies do even worse things is really hard to take. Why can’t we just go solar and respect our land? But, I digress.

The Lakota people are spiritual descendants of the buffalos and used to live in harmony with this magnificent animal. The minute the buffalos were wiped out, so were the Lakota people. Their whole culture revolved around buffalos and nature. Due to generations of children being sent to boarding schools, few of the Lakota people know how to be natives any more or speak their language.

Reverse Boarding Schools.
The solution seems to be reverse boarding schools. For the Lakota nations to create their own language schools for children 3-7 to live and speak only the Lakota language and learn only the Lakota culture. They could even invite white kids to come to school with them which would be a reversal of “Nazi nuns” forcing their sterile white Christian culture on Indian kids. After that, there needs to be an economic structure where people could have jobs where they could speak the language. The problem is that there are hardly any jobs in the reservations these days regardless of language. But, I had a positive vision.

Planting Seeds
If the Lakota people want to get together and quit complaining about the past, and start doing something about the future, good things could happen. The buffalos can be revived if there is a seed population. Buffalos can be bred. The linguistic loss can also be rebred. There are about 2000 speakers of Lakota, so if those people were used exclusively to spread the language to children, then the language could grow from that seed. However, if the seed is lost, then the language will become extinct forever! Maybe it is God’s plan to unify the human species by reducing the number of languages spoken and having many or most of us know English. Maybe it is God’s plan to unify the races by having us all live together in big cities througout the world. It certainly looks like this. But, if the Lakota want to preserve their cultural heritage which matters to me (not convinced it matters to them), then they will have to start planting seeds.

My Vision
The vision I saw was a huge expanse of land going for miles filled with buffalos roaming freely. There were clusters of teepees with people doing tasks. Then, there was an underground tunnel that went to an undergound compound. A guy was there watching surveylance cameras. The buffalos were mostly killed off in the 1800’s by white people who didn’t live in harmony with nature. The lesson learned is that what is not protected will be lost or stolen. So, fences around this vast expanse of grassy land were built with cameras to keep poachers out. Next, I saw a building near the edge of this huge field with a call center. The agents were mostly Lakota, but they were speaking Ethiopian, Hebrew and Chinese. Apparently, after World War 3, most of the cultures of the world were wiped off the globe permanently. Most Africans died, but through a miracle of God, the Ethiopians survived and became a thriving spiritual culture. Israel suffered a devastating invasion and lost most of its population too, but rebuilt and populated to become a thriving spiritual nation as well. China also suffered terrible population losses, but got their act together and decided to live without polluting their rivers and air anymore. All of these cultures thrived and needed additional labor to help them deal with their businesses. So, they hired Lakota Call Centers in South Dakota which was now an independent country.

The Lakota people decided there was safety in numbers, so they decided to have at least six children per family. They also decided not only to make sure all of their children were fluent speakers of their language, but they also decided to have cultural tests once a year to make sure that all of their tribal members were experts at the culture.

0% unemployment
In traditional Native American societies there was zero percent unemployment. Everyone had a job. The women picked berries, gathered wood, and did handicrafts while the men were hunters and warriors. After the buffalo were wiped out and people were run off their traditional lands, the people no longer knew how to make a living. Having their children sent to boarding schools did not help the unemployment problem either. The problem was that they needed to adapt to find new ways of employment and the chiefs were not helping.

Paying Tax on the Land
The biggest issue here is that in real life in America, if you own land, you have to pay tax. Native folks don’t see why they should pay tax on land that belongs to them. There is always a price you pay for land. In tribal times, people paid with the lives of their male children to protect the land. Many boys would die in tribal wars to maintain control of hunting grounds and territory. In the modern world, people pay for land and pay taxes on land. American Indians never liked this idea because they figured the land inherently belonged to them just because their ancestors had lived there. Under a nation, if you own a parcel of land and pay taxes on it, you can maintain ownership. But, for nations, there is no intrinsic ownership other than your ability and willingness to defend the land. So, after the U.S. took over, native people no longer “owned” or controlled the land. But, in my vision, the Native Americans got over their hang ups about resisting playing by the new rules and decided that paying taxes on land and paying for land was better than being wiped out — so they did.

A gradual expansion
The Lakotas in my vision decided that they needed industries. Their traditional industry was handicrafts and buffalo hunting. So, they decided to continue this tradition by saving money, and buying land in South Dakota. They used the land to raise buffalos. The more money they made, the more land they bought. Land was not that expensive out there, so they quickly acquired miles and miles of land. After a few generations, they got back all of the land they had lost many generations previously. Since in my vision South Dakota becomes an independent nation, and the Lakota population grew to be huge, the Lakota population controlled the whole country. However, the Lakota people decided to become more hospitable to outsiders and let them stay in their land providing they would play by Lakota rules which meant living in harmony with nature, knowing some of the Lakota language, and passing a cultural test. The joke is that if there were such a cultural test given in 2016, not only would the whites all fail it, but most of the native kids would fail miserably as well.

A relationship with God
I don’t claim to know what the spiritual conditions are in Native Reservations throughout America. However, without God’s graces, evil forces like Uranium mining, buffalo genocides, heroin, child abuse, and many others will creep in. In my opinion, the entire tribe should have regular prayers to have God protect the land from abusers and have God heal the land that has been abused through natural forces. Without God, no positive growth is possible. The tribe also needs to understand that gifts from God come with Tything. Without giving to charity, not many blessings will come your way.

The Solution
The solution to the problem of cultural iradication of the Lakota people is:

1. Language incubation projects
2. An economic culture with industries that thrive in the Dakotas involving buffalo harvesting, handicrafts, and remote outsourcing businesses. An economic structure where the tribe makes sure that all are employed no matter what.
3. Repopulating the tribe
4. Cultural education for tribal members as well as guests from other communities
5. A willingness to pay tax on land and purchase land for environmentally sustainable use
6. A relationship with God is necessary otherwise all else will crumble.

Standing Rock: Energy independence vs. environmental safety

January 24, 2017 by 123outsource
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Wars over oil replaced by drilling at home
America got involved in a huge war in Iraq primarily over control of oil. America also wanted the dollar to still be used by Iraq instead of the Euro, so the war was in essence a bullying session at great expense to both nations. Third, the war cmbined with the Afghanistan invasion also was about improving our military position near Iran. All three of these political objectives make logical sense. But, fighting huge wars for such small goals seems corrupt and not worth it. The solution is to create our own energy at home. And since our nation is so large, especially when you include Alaska, there are lots of energy opportunities.

Drilling at home weakens the Arabs
America and Canada started finding new and improved ways to drill for oil in our own lands without depending on the Middle-Easterners which was a great idea. Many of the Gulf countries are going under financially now that America is in competition with them for oil production as the cost of oil has gone down. Weakening countries engaged in terrorism or engaged in supporting others do terrorism seems like a reasonable national goal.

But, fracking & offshore drilling are bad for mother earth
The problem is that America doesn’t know when to stop exploiting the land for resources. Moderate drilling for oil in safe places makes sense. But, what about offshore drilling? That can create spills that are impossible to completely clean up that are devastating to the environment. And fracking is much worse as it pollutes ground water and does long term damage to whatever region it is done in. Many people claim that fracking increases the rate of cancer many times over. I personally don’t know what the truth is, but creating environmentally unsafe conditions for temporary profit are extremely bad in the long run. America needs to find clean and safe ways to lead the world of energy.

Standing Rock Protests
Right now, the native folks at Standing Rock are protesting a pipeline that is going to go over a river. They know that if there is damage to the pipe sometime in the future, that the environmental consequences will be hard to control. Additionally, since the rivers from North Dakota feed into the Mississippi river, if you pollute one river, you pollute the entire network of rivers. The claims about long-term environmental risk made at Standing Rock make sense — and our government should start listening if they want a planet that their children can inherit.

Worldwide environmental standards are necessary
The solution to the problem seems to be three-fold. First as a nation and as a planet, we need clearly defined environmental standards and goals. There should ideally be a worldwide government in charge of environmental safety to regulate countries like… well… all of us. Brazil is cutting down their rainforest, America is fracking, and China is polluting. We all need to wake up and regulate.

The second solution is to find alternatives to drilling. Solar energy is currently more expensive than oil, but doesn’t have to continue to be. If more research was put into the efficient construction of solar energy farms, it would be more cost effective, and with no damage to the environment. Additionally, energy from corn based ethanol are also solutions. The problem is that the price of food is so high, that ethanol can not be a competitive alternative to oil. The only way to reduce the price of food staples is to reduce the population of the planet — but, reducing the population would also create a reduction in oil prices. Do we have to wait until the oil is almost all used up before we find alternative energy resources?

Last, having more efficient ways of using fuel seems to make sense. Hybrid cars are helping people save energy. Van-pooling and ride sharing are becoming more popular these days as well. More efficient models for distributing goods nationwide would be yet another way to save on fuel. More efficient train and truck systems of transportation would be part of that solution.

I hope we can meet our energy needs without destroying our planet. The bigger issue is getting the people in power as well as regular folks to see that our environment is one of the most important issues of the day — and if it doesn’t get solved, we’ll all be very very sorry.

If the Lakota people would network with those outside their tribe and outsource!

January 10, 2017 by 123outsource
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We normally think of India and the Philipines when we think of outsourcing. But, we have local people who suffer from horrible unemployment. Native American tribes normally live out in the middle of nowhere. They are far from cities, far from work, and just don’t have a lot to do.

What if someone created a call center in or near the Lakota nation? The cost of labor is not high, and lots of people are willing to work. The problem is that their level of experience has not been developed.

People who live in the middle of nowhere need businesses that thrive in the condition of being nowhere. Remote is the keyword here. Call centers, data entry facilities, farming, RV camps, and internet businesses can do quite well while being nowhere. In fact, call centers do better when nowhere because the cost of land is low. Another interesting factor is that the stress level at a call center would be less if people worked near the ocean or in the middle of nowhere. It is more relaxing there and the relaxing attributes of the landscape counteract the stress of the job.

Cottage industries should be encouraged for those living in or near native reservations. It is not easy or cost-effective to get outside capital. But, creating mini-industries at home or in a small office space or industrial space doing basic tasks for a low price make perfect sense to get a business off the ground.

But, what about networking? In a greater sense, Native Americans are isolated partly because of their geography. But, also do to a lack of social networking. You could live near others, but if there is no way to connect to them, you would be socially isolated. Lakota people are regaining their culture these days as they came close to losing their language. They need to network with people from their tribe or other tribes living outside of the reservation for cultural and business activities. They also need to network with mixed-race people who probably feel left out. Additionally, Native Americans need to network with people who used to be Native American in a past life but were reincarnated into Hindus, whites, or some other community. The more connected you are, the more ideas will flow, and the more opportunities have the chance to be offered to you. By living in isolation, you can’t receive anything because nobody even knows you are there.

The Lakota language also needs to recover which is an entirely different topic. But, I’ll include it here since it is sentimental to me even though I only know one word of the language. Language is learned best by people who are three or four years old. Since so few people speak the Lakota language, those few thousand linguistic human assets should be allocated to spending lots of time with the 3-7 year old folks and speak only the Lakota language. Then, to maintain the language, work environments on the reservation need to be set up where only that language is spoken. But, that is the whole problem that I have been addressing in this article. There isn’t a strong work culture. Two hundred years ago, there was 100% employment in the Lakota tribe as men, women, and children all were assigned a task. After the buffalo were killed off and the US government took over most of the land, the Lakota traditional way of life was demolished, and the people were not able to adapt to other types of lifestyles.

My recommendation — adapt!
Culture never stays the same, and neither do languages, souls, or anthing else. The only thing that is constant is change. As living organisms, we adapt or die out. Since native culture is so sentimental to many of us, it is very sad to see their culture die out. So, the solution is to adapt!

The old way of life involved living in connection to buffalo. Food, clothing, shelter, and tools all came from parts of the buffalo. In older times when human populations were lower and more natural, buffalos roamed wild. Those days are over, but buffalos can still be farmed in free-range style farming. I feel that the Lakota people should focus on being ranchers and breeding their sacred animal that they feel they descended from (perhaps they mean spiritually descended from.)

I feel that cottage industries in outsoucing specialties could save the Lakota people too. After all, Lakotas speak English as their first language, and that is something call centers in foreign countries cannot capitalize on as their English is not native!

Next, traditional arts are very popular world-wide, yet Native Americans don’t normally have good marketing skills. The skills of production are there, but there is always some Lebanese guy who makes a killing on marketing native goods. Why can’t native people learn to sell their own goods in an efficient way? Good marketing skills could open up huge markets for pottery, beads, paintings, and other native art which could create tremendous employment opportunities. Additionally, adaptations on traditional arts such as native mouse pads, sofas with Native Americna apolstery, website development using native art, and anything else you can think of.

Finally, there are other businesses that would work well out in the middle of nowhere. RV Parks, tortilla factories, cultural classes, clothing manufacturing, solar panel manufacturing, wind power manufacturing, and more. I discourage the casino business as it is not holistic and leads to addition and unhealthy outcomes which reflect poorly spiritually on the community.