*Note From The Editor: Greetings, Dear Reader, and thanks for visiting the One World In Concert blog. The following post was submitted by the esteemed Lakota elder (and regular OWIC blog contributor), Wicahpi Wanjila - Leroy C. Curley. Though the post is quite long, we find the subject matter interesting and thought-provoking, and we hope you do, too. As such, and given OWIC's respect for tradition and the importance of diversity, we have opted not to edit or shorten Mr. Curley's words in any way. And so it is, without further ado, that OWIC proudly presents to you, "Lakota Economics". 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 its 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 were 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 well-being of all was the premier Lakota 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 Treaties of Peace between the United States Government and the Lakota Nation (mascot-name, Sioux). Private properties included the horses, hides, furs, leathers and clothing made from these materials. Also personal property were 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 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 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 was "illegally taken" (1980 U.S. Supreme Court jargon for
stolen) from the Black Hills, still unaccounted for even in the currently bewildered 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.
Where was the Congress' power when in 1985, private central bankers from five countries devalued the dollar? U.S. citizens of European ancestry and their inability to change may be the problem here - so accustomed to the monarchy - which is now the Federal Reserve Board Chairman as the King with the Congress, Supreme Court, President and Citizens as subjects, vassals, serfs and so on.
Meanwhile look at the operation of money when it is controlled by private monopolistic manipulation. In graphic statistics then: The percentage share of national income earned by agriculture annually as realized net farm income from 1929 to 1983 slipped from a high of 7.2% in 1929 to a low of .52% in 1983.
In almost the same time span, the percentage of national income going to interest payments skyrocketed from 1% in 1950 to 10% in 1985.
The Total Credit Market Debt (TCMD) for the second quarter of 1991 was $13.5 trillion compared with the nominal Gross National Product (GNP) for the same quarter of 1991 was $5.6 trillion.
The breakdown of interest rate paid on TCMD by the following entities shows the following: tax-exempt organizations 6%, open market paper 6%, U.S. Government 7%, bank loans 8.5%, other loans 8.5%, mortgages 9%, corporations 9%, and the consumer 13%. Most of the above stats are from the book, "The Coming Gold Discipline" by Conrad Michael Modica. But in the last six months at one point, TV news reported $700 billion in credit card debt at 15% or more. Here, it is most opportune to quote the convention - "Usury and any other form of exploitation of man by man shall be prohibited by Law." - the foregoing rule against loansharking found in the American Convention of Human Rights: "Pact of San Jose, Costa Rica," Chapter II, Article 21, Part 3. Consequently, there is no doubt from the Lakota view that the U.S. monetary theory and policy is a centralized money system controlled by the very few and not in a democratic way.
And insofar as economic systems of capitalism and communism, the experience of the Lakota people with both is very little and none whatsoever with communism. No major corporation, company, or industry has located on the reservations making it appear as though an embargo or trade sanctions are in place in Native territories. Thus the money system rolls on outside of Native America.
Lakota economics was simple but now is exploring the complexities of a business world in a so-called "free" market so to speak and more on this later. A transitional time, the Lakota way of doing things is in the neutral zone presently, not certain exactly which way to go. The simpler Lakota way as well as the complex business world of today is best described by John Kenneth Galbraith in his book,
The New Industrial State, Chapter II: From the simple to the complex, the way we do things are: A. Less time to more time; B. Less capital to vast increase in capital; C. Flexible to inflexibility; D. General manpower to specialized manpower; E. Simple organization to complex (specialists, high tech); and in this way the Lakota way of doing things will remain the same - not stagnant but not carbon-copy of any other economics extant.
In the matter of the business code as to the security of ownership, of transactions, of upholding contracts, in the larger context in which the Lakota find themselves, no such relations are discernible. When the original contract/treaty (1851 & 1868 treaties) is broken, lesser documents become meaningless until the original is reviewed and rectified.
Paperwork red tape being the lifeblood of today's officialdom, land and everything derived from it is recorded, albeit inefficiently. This integrated property process ideally requires the fulfillment of several steps as suggested in the book
The Mystery of Capital by Hernando DeSoto. The six effects of an integrated property process are as follows: 1. Fixing the economic potential of assets, 2. Integrating dispersed information into one system, 3. Making people accountable, 4. Making assets fungible, 5. Networking people, and 6. Protecting transactions. And quickly and concisely, none of the above six points is true for the Lakota.
Again, witness the United States' illegal unilateral abrogation of the International Treaties of 1851 and 1868 between the U.S. and the Lakota Nation.
In contrast, in the Lakota era Lakota territories were in allodium - absolutely free of any rent, service, tax, congestion, pollution and no sense of an "overlord," excepting in a spiritual way. In truth Lakota territory to be in liberty is the rightful understanding assigned by the Creator to all the people in the work of the Wolakota.
So the question remains of what to do with the Lakota economy into the future. To do that one needs to take the whole view of how they are doing things worldwide.
From the writings of Mr. Benjamin Barber in his
Jihad vs Mcworld, most of the following quotations and numbers 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/non-corporate 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. So-called third world economic policies as pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 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 the homeless in the U.S. will attest.
Again what do we do about the reservation economy as find it in great need of restoration to the traditional full-employment economy. Central planning from Uncle Sam through the 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 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 non-exploitative.
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 or 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 mis-named "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
intervest which is really what happens, usury at expensive play here by the monopoly Federal Reserve and banker/financier unearned income people.
Jobless, homeless hungry 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 conditions. One finds poverty in the countries all over the world whether it is a capitalist, communist or socialist area.
But then, the Lakota Way of doing things economically is to ensure that hungry and homeless people do not stay in that condition permanently since drought/famine and other tragedies do happen at times but not for very long. The current jobless situation in Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota is the number one problem for all reservations in the United States.
This is the overview contrasting Lakota and other major economies. The Lakota way pre-1800s had not one red penny. Whereas present-day capitalism has all the money in the world. But the Lakota way had full employment while capitalism and unemployment seem always to go together.
Into the future, grazing lands lease rates heretofore kept artificially low by the BIA/IRA combination, both federal entities, must end because it is outright violation of property rights and taking of monies not belonging to the BIA/IRA.
Wicahpi Wanjila - Leroy C. Curley
01/29/2010
