ewakpamni
Economic Development
Feather on Head Cultural Camp
The Feather on Head Cultural Camp is located in the heart of Wakpamni Lake at the Sundance grounds of the Lakota traditional spiritual leader Sidney Has No Horse. When there are not ceremonies being performed, guests may reserve one of the traditional teepees at the grounds and be hosted by the Has No Horse family for a rustic experience learning about the Lakota, our traditional cultural practices and medicines, our art, and traditional skills. The Cultural Camp has welcomed guests from all over the world. The camp employs local Community members and youth to host and participate actively in the tourism industry.
Two Lance Equestrian Camp (this project in development)
The Oglala have a long-shared history with horses. The Two Lance Equestrian Camp will provide families to an opportunity stay in traditional teepees and to learn basic horsemanship skills together, along with important Lakota values, alongside one of the founding traditional families of the Wakpamni Lake Community. Trail rides will explore the southeastern part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, from Rainbow Valley to the Wakpamni Lakes.
This centrally located Community Park is a mixed-use development project centered around our long-standing Powwow grounds in Batesland, SD and our new geothermal “GeoGreen Kitchen” greenhouse in our Powwow Garden. When fully developed this park will provide year-round activities and services to our Community members and visitors, focusing on our Community’s interests in being more active with each other in recreation and gatherings outdoors. The following is a list of programming planned for the park: Powwow grounds, Outdoor Bingo, Greenhouse and outdoor gardens, Pergola Pavilion for gatherings, Softball Diamond, Horse Racetrack, Teepee Village, Volleyball, Horseshoe, Archery, and Family Firepit for gatherings.
The Wakpamni Lake Community is one of the most isolated communities within an already remote Indian reservation within a very rural state. Like many other similarly isolated tribal communities, neither the permanent population base nor the tourism traffic exists for highly successful bricks-and-mortar based businesses. Thus, WLCC looks to design creative businesses that derive their income from other locations and other population bases. One of the most obvious is internet-based businesses, or e-commerce.
e-Wakpamni. WLCC has developed “affiliate” commission-based relationships with numerous online retailers which provide a small commission back for every purchase. Not only can our own community members, tribal entities and tribal corporations use these links, any purchases by any buyers will provide the same commission-based benefit. Buyers can purchase at the exact same prices and provide a community benefit. As such we created the website eWakpamni so that buyer can use any of these major retailers from our eWakpamni portal.
The Wakpamni Lake Community is located a minimum of 4+ hours roundtrip, through the Badlands, from any major retailer. Shopping for our community was already expensive and potentially dangerous during hot summer and cold winter months. Encouraging our community to shop online saves travel resources and protects the health of our community and elders.
Create Your Own Portal. Another component to our eWakpamni business is helping other state, tribal and local governments set up their own affiliate “e” commission-based shopping portals. We have worked hard to develop the contacts at these and other major online retailers and the knowledge to design the site and the commission structures, and we can help you set up your own e-TRIBE affiliate commission-based shopping portal. For rural, isolated, and large land-based tribes and towns, there are many benefits, here are some of the benefits we see:
-
Community Health & Safety: The Wakpamni Lake Community is located a minimum of 4+ hours roundtrip, through the Badlands, from any major retailer. Shopping for our community was already expensive and potentially dangerous during hot summer and cold winter months. Now with COVID it can be deadly. Encouraging our community to shop online saves travel resources and protects the health of our community and elders.
-
Commission for Purchases Already Being Made: Like many governments and businesses the Wakpamni Lake Community (WLC) and the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation already make purchases from these companies – whether it is gifts and prizes for our weekly community bingo gatherings or building supplies for one of our community construction projects. By forming these affiliate relationships, we now get a commission for the same purchases at the same prices, and those proceeds subsidize the programs listed above.
-
Your Regular Purchases Contribute to Tribal/Local Government Needs Without Any Extra Expenditures: If you live in Wakpamni Lake or in Pine Ridge, if you are one of our partners, or if you just want to make a positive impact in a tribal community – you can make your same online purchases at the same prices but help our community out with the commission by using our eWakpamni portal.
Financial Services. The Wakpamni Lake Community is one of the most isolated communities within an already remote impoverished Indian reservation within a very rural state. Like many other similarly isolated tribal communities, neither the permanent population base nor the tourism traffic is large enough for a successful bricks-and-mortar based businesses. One of the most obvious alternatives is internet-based businesses. As such the Wakpamni Lake Community tribal government owns a series of small financial services companies through the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation (WLCC), which provide small-dollar, short-term, fully amortized online loans. While the businesses are all located in Wakpamni Lake, the loans are only provided on the internet and only to customers in other locations.
Each of these businesses are wholly owned subsidiaries of WLCC. WLCC is the wholly owned economic development arm of the Wakpamni Lake Community, a subsidiary municipal tribal government of the federally recognized Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Each wholly owned subsidiary has all the same rights, privileges and immunities of all tribal owned corporations. All WLCC’s financial services subsidiaries operate under and in compliance with Oglala Sioux Tribal law and Wakpamni Lake Community ordinances, and all applicable federal laws.
The United States government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the country. Providing goods and services to other governments is one of the most reliable arenas for tribal government owned corporations. While government contracting is still a nascent arena for WLCC, we are exploring Medical Supplies and Language Translation Services, and look forward to expanding more into and partnering within the government contracting arena.
Our health is our nutrition. The Wicozoni Wateca project produces, acquires, stores, and distributes local grown and highly nutritious foods to our Wakpamni Lake Community elders and members. It is the culmination of several ongoing Community efforts to maintain a consistent supply of a diversity of healthy foods throughout the year. Some examples of our local food sourcing for distribution include Powwow Gardens, the GeoGreen Kitchen at Powwow Gardens, Lakota Greens, Community and Family gardens, elder raised porch gardens, and local farm partnership shares to achieve this program's goals.
Wakpamni Lake Community GeoGreenKitchen
Located at the Powwow Park in the Powwow Gardens, the GeoGreenKitchen is an underground greenhouse which uses the consistent ambient temperature of the earth to keep the greenhouse at a constant temperature for year-round growth. It is based on the Greenhouse in the Snow model. Our first GeoGreenKitchen is to grow food for our community. We will build additional GeoGreenKitchen greenhouses in the future for greater food production.
A key tenet for the Wakpamni Lake Community is to restore Food Sovereignty to our community. The federal government destroyed indigenous foods ways to trigger tribal compliance through dependency on federally rationed foods. Those government foods were of poor nutritional quality and have created generations of health-related issues, including diabetes.
Powwow Gardens, GeoGreenKitchen, Lakota Greens, Wicozoni Wateca, and the Community and Family Gardens are each integral parts of restoring the Community’s health and food independence.
The Community Gardens Project supplements the Powwow Park Gardens and GeoGreenKitchen by creating outdoor gardens throughout the community housing areas, cultivating indigenous medicinal plants, hay bale gardening throughout the powwow grounds and other community outdoor spaces, and purchasing partnership shares with surrounding local farmers and gardeners.
The Family Gardens Project includes providing tiling services, vegetable starts and seeds, and gardening advice to Community families. In addition, for the elderly we incorporate the Family Garden Project into the Elderly Ramps & Decks Project and build our elders waist-level raised beds on their newly built decks to facilitate elderly access to gardening.
We began these initiatives before COVID, but COVID has further highlighted the nutritional based health disparities as well as food supply chain disruptions and has only intensified the importance of growing and securing our own healthy foods.
Powwow Gardens is our outdoor vegetable garden growing space within the Powwow Park. Within the Powwow Gardens is also located our indoor year-round growing space, the GeoGreenKitchen..
Wateca R&D was created to think big, its theme is “Innovate, Integrate, Indigenize.” To capitalize on the best qualities Native Americans and Tribal corporations have to offer. To integrate traditional Lakota values into modern businesses. To benefit from the tax, financing, and other advantages Congress has created to encourage business with Tribes and Tribal corporations.
-
Current Projects
-
GeoGreenKitchen
-
Wateca Farms (this project is under development)
-
-
Areas of Interest
-
Food Independence
-
Renewable Energy
-
Internet Based Opportunities
-
The Wakpamni Lake Community is rural and isolated. The nearest basic services are 45 minutes to an hour away. The Community leadership designed a Town Center to bring both services to the Community and provide a central social gathering location.
The design entails a commercial center that would house an enterprise, such as a shipping and transit business, that would then help subsidize the social retail space – which would include a community center, tutoring learning center, coffee shop, health and exercise facility, and laundromat.
The Wakpamni Lake Town Center was to be constructed using annual proceeds from a bond financed investment, but the investment company committed fraud and stole the invested proceeds. Fortunately, the criminals have been caught and are incarcerated. Unfortunately, the completion of the Town Center is on hold until alternative financing can be secured. Community leadership however remains in prayer and hopeful for the eventual completion of this important Community Town Center.
This project is still under development.
Many tribes struggle to provide residential/structural fire departments for their community, as fire departments are often financed through property taxes and tribal nations for the most part do not have property taxes (the land is held in trust by the federal government). On the other hand, wildland fire teams can be very profitable businesses particularly when they are able to quickly deploy throughout the United States as needed and when they are also able to contract for services to support fire camps.
WLC and WLCC, therefore, have designed a hybrid fire department model incorporating both wildland and structure firefighters. Whereby a deployable wildland firefighting team will generate the revenue which shall assist in subsidizing the provision of local governmental structural/residential fire protection. This concept is still under development.
The Wakpamni Lake Community created its current economic development arm, the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation (WLCC) nearly a decade ago. But the elders and leadership of the Wakpamni Lake Community has been working for years to generate revenue and bring opportunities. Some of the older archived projects and efforts can be found at: https://wakpamnilakecommunity.wordpress.com/