Page 8 RAIN January 1979 • Native communities in the United States and Canada possess a surprisingly low number of people participating in any form of material production. In most cases, people are not producing the thi°ngs the community needs. They are on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, and they are trapped there by the enormous grants and the welfare system which is the • reservation economy. Conditions may be better materially under the welfare economy than they were during the period of "benign neglect," but the basic problems remain unaddressed. Part of what has happened is that the motivation to address those problems has been removed for a lot of people. When asked about the future, most of the federally funded people respond that the U.S. has a "trust responsibility" to Indians. They think the fed~ral funding will keep coming in forever. .. "Cultures are inconceivable without an economic base. EveQ spiritual life revolves to a consider~ble extent around the ways that people see their lives - supported." • The massive federal funding ·which has flooded into Indian reservations in recent years has created jobs and has brought accompanying social problems. On the Yakima Nation, everyone who wants a job has one. Yet, Yakima also has the highest adolescent suicide rate and the highest alcoholism and drug abuse rates in the long history of that nation. People who believe that employment and employment alone is a key to solving social problems need to examine the record in the Indian country. The social problems bear a visible association. with the increas,ed federal funding. It is much more difficult to see that the funding has added much to these communities' abilities at self-reliance, however. A quick review of the grant proposals will reveal that the • federal dollars were intended to stimulate skill development and motivation which was supposed to lead to self-reliance among Native people. It hasn't worked. Indeed, even the attempts at real models of economic development have followed ·the route of the Economic Development Assistance/, Bureau of Indian Affairs efforts to make reservations into tourist areas, efforts which cost staggering amounts of money and which ended, in almost every case, in utter failure ..The BIA p9licy of "self-reliance" has been, in the kindest possible words, unenlightened... You have to experience the welfare .economy set up by federal agencies on reservations to truly understand its power to destroy cultures and people's lives. It is as intense a microcosm of the destruction-prone larger economy as you will ever find. • That's why when Native Americans start reaching out to reestablish their economic primacy- and hence their culturesthere's a lesson in it for us all. The Autumn '78 Akwesasne Notes article "Regaining Control Over Our Lives," excerpted here, has helped forge strong new connections between the goal of Native self-determination and the use ofappropriate technologies. Its themes are better 'deta.iled in the Sept.!Oct. issue of Self-Reliance, which notes examples of Native selfsufficiency projects across the country. Everywhere, there are people seeking to Mend the Hoop. -SA ✓ Economic policies such as industrializatiop were introduced to Native communities with the full weight of the federal government:. The major target of those programs was the replacement and destruction of the traditional economics, and to that end,· the programs were surprisingly successful. Today, the growing lands of the Pueblo lie fallow and abandoned, the grazing lands of the Oglalas are leased to white ranchers, and the fields of the Senecas are rented·to,commercial farmersnon-Indian commercial farmers.... What the BIA has accomplished is that many Native communities presently suffer almost total dependence on federal , funding for their very existence. If the _funding can claim 'any success at all, it is in the area of acculturation. Communities which 40 years ago were almost entirely self-sufficient are today virtually assimilated into the U.S. economy... Culture and economy are inseparable. A lot of people today have come to accept the BIA definition of culture as referring to music, dress and language. But cultures are inconceivable without an economic base. Even spiritual life revolves to a considerable extent around the ways that people see their lives supported. Indeed, it is arguable that peoples' personal relationships and their relationships to their environment are molded by the ways in which they meet their needs, and the manifestation of those ways is what we ·call culture. In the absence of culture, there can be no economy. In the absence of economy, there is no culture. All that remains is the memory of cultl:lre. People who promote music and costume-making in urban cultural centers are not promoting culture, they are Native Economies THE PROMISE OF APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY
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