THE OTHER
AMERICANS
the debt go bad. This in turn makes
it more difficult for tribal members
to develop the sort of credit histories that are so key to upward mobility in modern society.
Zach Ducheneaux, a tribal member who sits on the board of directors of the Intertribal Agriculture
Council, an organization founded
in 1987 to promote the development of agricultural resources in
tribal territories, traveled to Capitol Hill in June. He was armed with
a request that the Government
Accountability Office undertake a
study of “credit deserts,” areas of
the U.S. that are statistically underserved by bank financing and
other credit opportunities.
“We think if you did a map of
credit deserts, places where there
is a lack of available credit and affordable credit to acquire assets to
produce income and build wealth,
it would lay right over the poorest
places in the country, including this
reservation,” Ducheneaux said. “It’s
a real problem here.”
Officials at the USDA said they
are working on programs to help
ease the commercial credit gap on
tribal land. The agency also noted
in June that it was taking advantage of a new rule, authorized in
the 2008 Farm Bill, that “will
HUFFINGTON
10.21.12
make it much easier for Tribes to
gain access to USDA funding for
water and sewer improvement
projects, electrical system upgrades and telecommunications
services including broadband.”
In the minds of tribal members
attempting to turn things around,
such incremental programs and investments are a pittance compared
to what’s been taken away, and
to what was promised in treaties
signed with their people.
“The reality is that the federal
government has a trust responsibility with the Cheyenne River
Sioux Tribe and every other tribe
in this country,” Briggs said. She
is currently the executive director
of Tribal Ventures, a 10-year, $11
million poverty-reduction plan
funded largely by the Northwest
Area Foundation, a Minnesotabased philanthropy.
The Tribal Ventures program
seeks to spur community and economic development opportunities
on the reservation, and by its conclusion in 2016, Briggs hopes to be
able to provide insight for other
tribes on what works and what
doesn’t in the struggle to lift reservations out of poverty.
“My relatives, my ancestors,
gave up much for this country to be
prosperous, to be what it is today,”
Briggs says, “and if people cannot
remember that, if they have forgot-