It's Me Again! And I'm Going to Build an Arts Colony (not really)

First and foremost I would like to apologize for my lack of online presence in recent weeks. 
But I have some lovelies for you
First off, and not so lovely is the two papers I wrote for my Cultural Anthropology class.  Yeah, they're not smashing pieces of writing (or of intelligent work) but, hey, I'll post them anyways.

The Lakota people are part of the Sioux Nation—a confederacy of three tribes.  There are seven bands of people within the Lakota tribe.  There are the Ogala, Sicangu, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Sihasapa, Itazpacola, and the Oohenupa.  The Lakota are the largest tribe within the Sioux Nation. 

            The Lakota were originally living in Minnesota, but moved west when they domesticated horses and European settlers moved into their lands.  They came to North and South Dakota and became a nomadic people who lived in teepees and followed the buffalo herds across the plains.  They began to use the horses that arrived in the Americas in the 1500s and became known among indigenous peoples as great warriors.

            They were a matriarchal society, and women ruled the domestic and family aspects of the various bands.  The Lakota had strict differentiations between the gender roles.  Men were hunters and had to defend the tribe if the need arose.  Monogamous marriages were most common, but men were allowed to have more than one wife. 

            Leaders of the tribe were chosen on a high social status from birth, but also on their wisdom and bravery. 

            Within the Lakota, there were two societies for men.  Membership in these societies would advance a man’s standing in within the tribe.  For the young men, there was the Akicita, who were warriors and hunters, and there were divisions among the Akicita.  For male elders, there was the Naca society, and they could declare war, determine the movements of their nomadic camp, and deal with community-related issues.

            The Lakota did not take to United States invasion passively.  There were several wars and many other battles (including the famous Little Bighorn battle) between 1862 until the massacre at Wounded Knee in late 1890. 

            Over many years and through several treaties that the U.S. broke, the lands allotted to the Lakota people shrank and shrank. 

            Nowadays, there are only eight isolated pockets of land mostly within South Dakota that the majority of the entire Sioux Nation lives on.  The government has tried to force the lifestyles of family farming and craftsmanship on them.  Then, during the Dust Bowl, much of the land in South Dakota was abandoned, and the federal government transferred the lands to the National Parks.  This land included the Black Hills which were sacred to the Lakota.  In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the land was taken illegally, but the US government has only offered financial compensation. 

            The Lakota still persist—they want their sacred lands returned to them.

So that's Part A in which we talk about a culture and their history and whatnot.  We were also supposed to identify a problem and then propose a solution to it - that's where Part B comes in. 

Now, bear with me here, because things are about to get conceptual and fancy.  (The article I read for research on this was informative, but also ghastly - and by that I mean boring!  I hope that my Part B isn't as ghastly as the article was)

A significant problem facing the Lakota tribe is poverty.  There are a few significant contributors to their poverty—a lack of adherence to the western notion of clock time, and the failure of the government to create job opportunities that can coexist with the Lakota way of life (Pickering).

            The Lakota sense of time is task oriented, meaning that things are not defined by the hour or minute, but rather by the things that get accomplished.  ‘Time was never a specific minute, but rather spaces of time, like early morning, just after noon, or just before midnight’ says a Lakota elder interviewed by Kathleen Pickering (92). 

            For the Lakota, socializing and working are inseparable, because “work happens where people are, rather than in an exclusive setting designated as the ‘work place’.  Economic opportunity is defined by maintaining good social relationships”(92).  Favors are traded and an individual or family can accumulate social capital so that, in times of hardship, their relations and friends will come to their aid. 

            Spending the majority of their days working in the western sense, would prevent them from having the opportunity to maintain their relationships.  ‘You have to take time enough to ask ‘do you need help?’ or ‘is there anything I can do?’ says a Lakota woman interviewed by Pickering (93).  The woman also says that those who don’t participate in the social network would be something of an outcast—unable to ask for help should the need arise.

            The government’s attempts to alleviate poverty in the Lakota tribe actually discourage them from work.  Aid programs like TANF operate on an income system, so that the more the recipient earns, the less aid he receives.  So if a Lakota woman was to sell a pair of homemade earrings, her aid money would decrease by the amount of money she earned from the sale—so why even bother?

            My proposed solution is an attempt to reconcile the two different notions of the economy that exist between western society and Lakota traditions. 

            Somewhere either extremely close to, or on the reservation, would be built an arts colony, to be staffed almost entirely by Lakota peoples.  An arts colony would need to be maintained, by housekeepers, cooks, and gardeners.  Instead of being paid by the hour, workers would be paid by the task they completed—a certain amount of money for tidying rooms, or mowing a lawn, or cooking a meal.  This way, the notion of work would still be task-oriented, and once the work has been completed, the employee is free to return to the reservation and maintain social relationships. 

            An arts colony would work better than a resort or a hotel, because the residents do not come to be entertained—they come to sit by themselves and to produce artistic works.  Therefore, they would not need to be constantly tended to.  One of the few people that would be required to always be on the colony premises would be security personnel.  The colony should be close enough to a reservation town so that artists could frequent is without issue.

            Usually, there are also organized events and activities in the evenings at an arts colony—these could be run by the Lakota as well, and would be good opportunity for craftsmen among the tribe to sell some of their works to other artists. 

            Because of the unique task-oriented nature of an arts colony, I believe it would be a good fit for employment that does not clash with the Lakota way of life. 

Yeah, so that's that.  Oi vey.

I love a good pun.