 There are very inspiring and exciting things happening at the Pine Ridge Reservation which is home to the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota. This video is going to introduce you to what they are doing to restore resilience, economic independence, self-sufficiency, and cultural revival among the Lakota people. Being in alliance is about being in service to each other and when you're in service it's about a yes of course attitude. Being an ally also means that because I'm committed I'm going to explore further and dig deeper and see whether where the growth opportunity is there for me and if I can actually add value. Everybody loves the cultural native. Everybody loves the ceremonies we share but when it comes to talking about the hardships and the injustices and the reality of what native people deal with on a day-to-day basis that native isn't so popular so being willing to stand next to that outspoken native that isn't always talking about the most popular topics I think that's what makes a good ally. I think showing up as an ally starts with a contextual understanding of not only what has happened but what is happening and I think it's really important to remember that this isn't past tense and these injustices are happening every day and we're actually seeing them unfold for people like we're seeing this healing happen for people within the camp to this very day. People don't have clean water, they don't have running water, they don't have good food, they don't have housing so they're just really in this mode where they can't think about like intergenerational trauma and epigenetics and really hard to heal something when it's like like you get a wound and it scabs up and then someone keeps coming and like ripping it off and it's like you know it's ongoing it's not like it hasn't stopped yet it's been going on for like 500 years since then we've been like in survival mode trying to just survive and it's hard to really focus on anything else you know like building happy communities and having healthy relationships with your children. It's just the willingness to help you know the willingness to ask questions when it's appropriate showing a respect for the culture for the land for the spirituality for the people if you treat the earth in a good way the earth will treat you in a good way and it's just a mutual respect is what it is really. Right now we've got the second annual IWPS convergence we had one last year and the convergence is really our event to bring together folks who are working on these different projects who have these skills around natural building gardening and to just come together in community to really show the power of community and what the interrelationships can create. We have people from all over the world all nations converge on Pine Ridge and then we have community-based projects that they help to implement on Pine Ridge. I'd say that this year we're really deepening our relationships and we're also spreading to support these food distribution networks across the reservation so it's not just one site anymore this has now become the tool hub for the reservation and we also have other places where they are creating gardens to heal emotional trauma. There are a lot of residents who come over to folks from other reses and we make it very accessible we'll cover fuel costs whatever it takes I mean it's free for all native folk to really showcase what's happening here to demonstrate it and to use this energy to activate and mobilize our projects moving forward as well. We work on low-cost alternative replicable models that any family can implement with a little bit of help across the reservation so we build with tires and a lot of industrial cast off and junk basically. People approach us and say we have a piece of land and we want to do this for a family and then we go out and take a look and if we if it's within our ability to help them to do their project then we partner up on it and figure out a way to get the funds necessary to get things together. This is our experiential farm or place to do builds and experiments and then see if they're replicable if they're economic enough to use here on Pine Ridge and we're all food producers the hope being that we can put a dent in our food desert here. When I heard the term permaculture and that was many years ago and I said what the hell it's nothing but white people and they're going around the world and they're you know they're taking the best practices of all the indigenous nations and they're putting in a package and then they're saying oh look what we invented permaculture look at this but really as as my brother's here mentioned it's something that the indigenous people have been doing for thousands of years. All this permaculture knowledge that we have we're just trying to reiterate all of it because we are like I most of you know our ancestors have been doing this for thousands of years. My family we used to cultivate and we used to plant and it was communal it's huge practically the whole community came to plant these enormous fields we practiced crop rotating everything we had more than four corn fields and we would plant these fields like in three days and then of course during harvest that was distributed to everyone when we plant corn we plant seven seeds one is for us one is for family one is for the animals one is for the birds one is for everyone one is for the earth that's how we plant. As we move from this egocentric colonialist ideology back towards this indigenous ancestral knowledge that is egocentric that as we move through that transition we all recognize and forgive our part in the equation and that we actively work towards embracing our humanity reaching out to each other and recognizing that we all are part of the same tribe humankind. I didn't want anything to do with it until I came here and I saw how lovingly that the permaculture crew touches the ground but you know the important thing among our people is to show up and to show that you mean what you're saying and that you're going to walk your top. The incredible work of everyone at the Pine Ridge Reservation and I hope you are as well. I would love to see you support them in their mission there are links in the description to learn more to get involved and support them so make sure that you do that and if you want people to see this and to be inspired by it make sure to like comment and share this video and if you haven't already make sure to subscribe to this channel where there will be many more videos to come. I love you all very much and I hope that you will go out there and make positive change and be a part of this movement for a better world.