By David Bartecchi | Director
For those of you who are new to the Lakota Lands Recover Project, we are a grassroots support organization that serves the region of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The LLRP is working to support grassroots organizations on Pine Ridge that are working to reclaim and consolidate tribal lands and access the resources needed for the Lakota people to live on, protect, and utilize it, helping to return the balance between economy, ecology, and culture.
The time from October - January 2015 has primarily been focused on supporting our affiliated grassroots organizations on the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Reservations. However, we are currently doing research on the impact of the USDA?FSA Indian Tribal Lands Consolidation Loan Program, a program that provides loans at full interest to tribes to purchase highly fractionated lands. For the Pine Ridge Reservation, virtually all the income they receive from leasing their lands to non-tribal members goes to pay down these loans. Even worse, because of these loans, the USDA holds a lien on all the land owned by Tribe - which gives them final say on all land-use/exchange/sale decisions, which we feel severely compromses their rights of sovereignty and self-determination. To research this we have submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request to USDA: FSA to better understand the history of these loans and how other tribes have been impacted by them. Pending the results of our FOIA request, we hope to have something published by summer 2015.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
