Lakota Economics
| March 09, 2010
The economy in various contexts is under review at the moment. The Lakota way that we did things in the years prior to the 1890’s is the great difference as we do things today. Wowasi econpi (work) in those days of the Lakota value systems was without money but is hard work nonetheless earned plentiful food and shelter for everyone. More importantly, all had to contribute one way or another, man, woman, and child. Thus, full employment was achieved. In English terminology this is called autarky – an independent, self-sufficient national economy.
Highly ethical was this Lakota economy because hunger and homelessness ere mostly unknown except in times of drought. Fasting to achieve physical – spiritual discipline is not being addressed here. But to carry on the economy, food and shelter was shared if need arose. Further, the first principle of Lakota political leadership was and still is the Okiciyapi – cooperation and generosity that no one is left in privation. The general wellbeing of all was the premier Lakota political principle.
The base of Lakota economics was / is the people and the land held in common, everything needed from Grandmother Earth. The area of the Lakota territories was hundreds of millions of acres as recorded in the 1851-reducedin the-1868 Treaties of Peace between the United States Government and the Lakota Nation (mascotname sioux). Private properties included the horses, hides, furs, feathers and the clothing made from these materials. Also personal property were the costumes and regalia, custom-made, some for official attire. There were personal sacred symbols and objects, even songs and prayers, but only one Sacred Pipe of Peace for everyone, kept at a secure central location. Also a personal cannupa (pipe) is used for family and the Tiospaye, the wider family.
So what kind of economics is the Lakota? Autarky, in a word, is what we did and lived by. In brief, the Lakota way of doing things can be described as the most self-sufficient national Lakota economy. Local resources for local needs is the best way to define the Lakota order of feeding and sheltering all the people. There was no large-scale violence as it is in the world trade today. The main difference between the Lakota economy and the post-1900 economy is money – the absence of it in one and the use of it in the other.
Since then, money is puffed up, people unaware of its meanings, definitions, rules, and regulations under which it is circulated. The Lakota view on money initially was that it had no more value than as trinkets or as kindling, that it had only temporary value. No written document for the establishment of money can be found in Lakota Territories.
No more than unbacked currency and rag money, the “dollar” sneaked in without consensus by the Lakota Oyate. The real money gold was “illegally taken” (1980 U.S. Supreme Court jargon for stolen) from the Black Hills, still unaccounted for even in the currently be wildered Trust Funds Mismanagement case.
Money is certainly not a scientific construct, from the Lakota view. The U.S. Constitution at Article I, Section 8 states: The Congress shall have power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” But, in practice, no member of congress is involved in decisions on money. The amount of money in circulation does not reflect the real value of the United States.
To be continued next week
Wicahpi Wanjila – Leroy Curley can be
reached at 605-964-8836 or online at
www.oneworldinconcert.com
(continued from last week)
From the writings of Mr. Benjamin Barber in his Jihad vs. Mcworld, most of the following numbers and quotations are obtained. From a Chinese commentator: “I am afraid one day we will become money hooligans, without culture.” After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the introduction of radical free-market economics, the material condition of Russia changed in the following ways: Forty percent of Russian GNP is crime related. Fifteen million are unemployed as compared with less than a million in the old Soviet Union. Viktor Chernomyrdin, after radical reform failed in the 1990’s, stated,
“The mechanical transfer of Western economic methods to Russian soil has done more harm than good. The period of market romanticism is over.” And Boris Yeltsin added, “Russia is a unique country. It will not be socialist or capitalist.” Russian free market experiment is what Alexander Solzhenitsyn called “wild” capitalism, with bankrupt pyramid schemes. In Latin America and Africa, it is reported that disastrously as the private sphere (corporate / business world) flourishes, the public sphere (native people / noncorporate world) crumbles. “Privatization is not democratization”, states Guillermo O’Donnell, Latin American political scientist.
The main point here is that poor countries are forced into an economics that destroys self-reliance, another manifestation of neocolonialism. Socalled third world economic policies as pushed by the IMF (International Monetary Fun) and the World Bank are to promote privatization and “free” trade as investment strategies. This policy includes breakneck urbanization, heavy capital investments, mass production, central planning, and advanced technology. This is “progress” by rapid social change which discourages the many, resulting in helpless dependents of the rich and expert few. But this is not the way to feed the hungry, as the hungry and homeless in the U.S. will attest.
Again what do we do about the reservation economy as we find it in great need of restoration to the traditional full-employment economy. Central planning from Uncle Sam through IRA (Indian Reorganization Act) is a failure as anyone can see with 75% unemployment rates. Unemployment is not good for the market economy which weakens the buying power which both the jobless and the store need. It is said that because they lack capital there is unemployment. But capital is a product of human work. Lack of capital may result from a low level of productivity but lack of capital cannot explain a lack of work opportunities. There are a million acres on the Wakpa Washte Oyanke (Cheyenne River) with a million things to do. We can feed everyone on the reservation if we have the spirit, the skills and the land, everything else being of secondary importance. You can forget about the economics taught at the level of elementary animal being, without human values. Rather, this is about cooperative human living in a pure democracy of Lakota wiconi or life where labor is freely chosen and nonexploitive.
Development of the reservation economy requires investment, savings, GNP, a line of credit, collateral and so on they say. But these requirements did not play the slightest part in the development of the United States economy when free lunch was available at the expense of the native economies.
It was only after this stage was law made to print monopoly money away from the discipline of the constitution at Article I Section 8. Lakota money here would be 2% on all loans making full employment a greater possibility. But now with money in the hands of private interests in the misnamed “Federal” Reserve, no one knows the spin on money.
It adds perspective to re-word terms such as free trade and free market when it also means expensive trade and expensive market to the Lakota. Re-definition also renders market to mean mark-it-up (prices); and interest-invest together to mean interest which is really what happens, usury at expensive play here by the monopoly Federal Reserve and banker / financier unearned income people.
Jobless, hungry, homeless people are the result of man-made decisions and activities which is unnatural. The same poverty is caused by drought, famine, tragedy and so on in understandable and natural con ditions
www.oneworldinconcert. com continued next week
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