Forging a New Frontier for the Lakota of Pine Ridge

Executive Director of Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation Nick Tilsen described the struggle of America’s indigenous people both through history and through today’s world. Tilsen remarked how during both periods in history, differing views of the world adversely affected his indigenous peoples’ community.

The perspective of Tilsen’s native Lakota tribe is one of the world being a delicate interrelated network of all resources and living things which opposed the country’s new settlers and their motive of manifest destiny.

“As the land began to be lost by indigenous people, the total assault on our way of life and our identity began to happen,” Tilsen said. “As this country was becoming the richest, most powerful country in the world, indigenous peoples were experiencing huge demise, often as us as indigenous people refer to it as ‘the American holocaust.’”

This included an “assault on our identity, of who we are,” which spurred a movement of intellectual resistance by Lakota and all indigenous people to hold on to their precepts and traditions, identity and place, enabling their way of life to continue to this day.

But modern-day struggles have included poverty and unemployment. Tilsen said for the past 150 years, the Lakota tribes have suffered “over 70 to 80 percent unemployment” and life expectancy rates for young men in Pine Ridge, S.D., is 54 years old, “one of the lowest life expectancies in the entire Western Hemisphere.”

Undaunted, the pursuit of solutions was fueled by the tribe’s connection to its past and its identity, according to Tilsen.

“We realized if we’re going to attack the poverty, attack the education, we can’t do it unless we have a strong foundation of who we are… we were able to heal our spirits through our ceremonies, and through our ceremonies we realized that to accomplish much, we had to make sacrifices in order to heal ourselves.”

Tilsen said that conducting these ceremonies and the recognition that “we can’t sit back and wait for other people to decide the future for us and our children” that led to the creation of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation. Thunder Valley is dedicated to building communities “that are a reflection of our identity, our culture and our place” and is driven by young people, who make up 50 percent of the population on Pine Ridge.

And as novices in the ways of philanthropy, Tilsen and his friends and family learned as they went, overcoming obstacles as they encountered them.

“We were in the poorest, most isolated place in America, most of us were young adults and young parents and we realized that if we don’t do something then nothing’s going to happen here… if we want change in our community, it has to come from within.”

Now, Tilsen said, the group has entered into a 10-year $60 million development that will “create hundreds of jobs, transform a region” and that “came from a place of pure heart.”

And a byproduct of this reinvigoration has been a rise of young people who have become community developers, builders of civic pride and facilitators of traditional ideals that are inspiring new points of view, outside of the poverty that has long been a part of the Lakota history. “That has come because we are grounded in who we are,” he said.

Tilsen used the term unkiye from his native Lakota which means “we are better together,” and it’s a sentiment that crosses over to every American neighborhood and community.

“Indigenous people and Native American communities are part of the cultural fabric that makes up America,” Tilsen said. “We’re part of the past, we’re part of the present and we’re gonna make damn sure that we’re part of the future, too.”

Notable Quotes:

“It’s time to stop talking and start doing. Don’t come from a place of fear, come from a place of hope.”

“It’s a huge challenge, but it’s a huge opportunity.”

On identity, place and purpose: “If you invest into people, working on their identity, with a purpose, the measurables that can come from that kind of investment are powerful.”

“The ‘Genius of the Place’ is in the spirit of the people in those communities. If you double-down and invest into that, there’s tremendous impact.”