Pipe, Bible, and Peyote Among the Oglala Lakota: A Study in Religious Identity.Paul B. Steinmetz

How is colonialism connected to American relationships with extraterrestrial beings? This commentary analyzes contemporary and founding US mythologies as constant, calculated attempts for settlers to obtain indigeneity in this land stemming from a fear of the “unknown.” From Columbus’s arrival to the Boston Tea Party, from alien and UFO fervor to paranormal experiences, spiritualism, New Age, and American Wicca, American mythology endlessly recreates conspiracy theories to justify its insatiable desire for resource extraction. I examine the US American mythology of extraterrestrials from two directions: the Oglala Lakota perspective of spirits born through a constellation of stars, and the “American” perspective of extraterrestrials born out of settler futurities. Manifest Destiny goes so far as to take ownership over time and reconfigure it into a linear, one-way street that is a progression towards apocalypse. For American Indians and other peoples targeted by the United States government, conspiracy theories prove true. Those who are targeted, Native and otherwise, understand as the violence of American mythology pours across the continent—abduction and assimilation, or death. How can Indigenous nonhuman ontologies orient settler ethics for the future?

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Lakota Female Scholarship: A Collective Case Study on Transcending Indigenous Educational Pathways and Persistence at the Graduate Level

Journal of Educational Issues ◽

10.5296/jei.v5i2.14966 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 97

Author(s):

Aspen Lakota Rendon ◽

Ahmed Al-Asfour

Keyword(s):

College Experiences ◽

Education Administration ◽

Cultural Identification ◽

Student Perspective ◽

Leadership And Management ◽

Collective Case Study ◽

Educational Pathways ◽

Oglala Lakota ◽

Informal Supports

This study explored the perspectives of seven Lakota females who graduated from Oglala Lakota College (OLC) master’s degree in Lakota Leadership and Management or Lakota Leadership and Management with an emphasis in Education Administration programs. Education histories, cultural identification, and college experiences were evaluated to investigate what incentives, not only influenced but propelled the women through the world of academia. The research was qualitative in nature, thus giving a thorough examination of each student perspective. The qualitative research was conducted through a collective case study. Four themes identified through in the findings were: financial support, high female influence, cultural identification, and formal versus informal supports.

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Welcome to the Oglala Nation: A Documentary Reader in Oglala Lakota Political History ed. by Akim D. Reinhardt

Great Plains Quarterly ◽

10.1353/gpq.2017.0061 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 37 (4) ◽

pp. 323-324

Author(s):

Margaret Huettl

Keyword(s):

Political History ◽

Oglala Lakota

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Indigenous cryptocurrency: Affective capitalism and rhetorics of sovereignty

First Monday ◽

10.5210/fm.v21i10.6955 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Cindy Tekobbe ◽

John Carter McKnight

Keyword(s):

Indigenous Community ◽

Cultural Relations ◽

Indian Reservation ◽

Finance System ◽

Pine Ridge ◽

Left Behind ◽

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation ◽

Blockchain Technology ◽

Oglala Lakota ◽

History Of

Financial technologies embody and shape notions of social, as well as financial, worth. New digital ‘alt-finance’ systems, including the blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin and similar ‘cryptocurrencies,’ are no exception: technology, rhetoric, imagined users and non-users, and a long history of sociotechnical, political, and cultural relations are all elements in a dynamic assemblage with wide-ranging consequences. This paper examines the rise and fall of one alt-finance system: MazaCoin, a Bitcoin variant intended to benefit the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The story of MazaCoin is one of an attempt to unite two apparently divergent sociotechnical assemblages: (1) a libertarian, elite technology of cryptocurrency, and (2) a richly traditional indigenous community with a deep desire for cultural survivance, bound up in a precarious economy left behind in the wake of more than a century of genocide.

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