BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Native American Reservation Mindset

Jane and vhawk, these are very important thoughts you are bringing up.

So many times when out with friends and we pass through a reservation, I hear the same comments that you and your mother thought: "I had to agree with her questioning why they didn't at least clean up around their homes."

When you wrote: "I didn't know how efforts towards improvement could attract attention with possible negative outcome." that gives me a well thought out reply to others who do not understand. I also did not know this, and I did not know that the individual families do not own their home because it is held in trust.

This is an extremely important thread to help so many people understand more fully about the "Reservation Mindset".

Thank you, Jane, for bringing this subject out in the open.

Those are very good points.. the ''ownership'' of something I know is a BIG issue/ point.. I wonder if things could be started in smaller ways..community gardens...things that are shared...and still instill the same sense of pride ,, but without the issue of ownership and money.

Community gardens would be a great way to get a good start on building up a sense of pride. There is nothing quite like a community coming together at harvest time and celebrating together.

When I was a kid our whole neighborhood came together in the autumn when the apples were ripe. Our area was once a huge apple orchard and just scattered trees remained. Everyone gathered the apples and we made apple cider.

Every member of every family was involved and we shared a sense of pride for our efforts and the results.

That's certainly the way it used to be in Indian communities as well. The whole clan cooperated in processing game and plant foods, with the bounty shared. There is a return to this underway off the reservations with community gardens being set up and locals buying from small organic farms.

vhawk, that's a great suggestion for an activitiy of ownership that isn't too "tainted" by "frogskins" and capitalism.

Is it possible for a reservation to set up a little store to sell crafts made by the people? Each artist could give a percentage of the sale price to the expense of running the store.

Has this ever been done that you know of?

This is something I'm looking into for Christmas shopping. There are artist co-ops, as well as not-for-profit and non-profit organizations who use revenue from sales for assistance programs on the reservations. I have ordered from a few of these organizations.

Many Indian artists are using internet services such as Ebay to sell their works directly to the public. I've been shopping on Ebay intermittently for years and purchased some nice sand paintings, although from a vendor, not the artist.

Right now my list is short, but growing and I'll be sharing it soon. If any of our forum readers know of similar enterprises on the reservation, please post the links for us to check out.

I get a lot of my Christmas gifts from trading posts online, Pow-Wows, tribal craft shows. To have some artist co-ops on the reservations would be nice.