White Hat Botanicals - Seeds for Lakota Health and Wellness

Lakota Women Entrepreneurs, Hemp and Healthcare

Community members across the Oceti Sakowin lack access to both, natural healthcare and quality, organic, botanical products that are both affordable and made within our cultural context. While, hemp production on the Rosebud Reservation has unlimited potential to enable Lakota women entrepreneurs, our families, our tribes and the Oceti Sakowin to achieve economic independence and self-sufficiency. Currently, there are no existing hemp farms on the Rosebud Reservation.

My project, White Hat Botanicals - Seeds for Lakota Health and Wellness, is to grow my business and line of herbal remedies, my “green pharmacy”, along with my marketing team of Lakota women and support the development of Bear Dog Hemp Farm and Health Clinic. The clinic will be sustained by Bear Dog Hemp farm production which will also provide CBD oil for White Hat Botanicals’ CBD line of remedies.

My herbalism is grounded in the practical application of traditional herbs and plants within Indigenous communities. My “community-determined” products, sprang from workshops I taught in reservation and Indigenous communities across my Oceti Sakowin homelands before settling in New Orleans to raise my children.

My popular workshops were a safe place for Oceti Sakowin tribal members to remember how our mothers, aunties, and grandmothers used traditional plants. We shared Lakota names and stories, harvested stored plants, and prepared practical remedies.

I’ve recently rebranded my product line, White Hat Botanicals and launched www.WhiteHatBotanicals.com featuring my new CBD products and working to re-establish wholesale accounts and grow my infrastructure. My markets are both reservation and Native American based, along with mainstream holistic, all natural herb shops and apothecaries.

Lakota women entrepreneurs will market White Hat Botanicals products at powwows, gatherings, rodeos, events, conferences, meetings and through their gift shops, tiospayes and networks nationwide. Our team will help us meet the need across Oceti Sakowin for access to affordable quality, community-determined botanicals , as well as, increase sales, bring in new customers, get existing customers to buy more, introduce new products, better establish my brand and increase customer loyalty.

Bear Dog Hemp Farm, on 3 acres of an individual 160-acre allotment, will support a health clinic on the Rosebud Reservation - akin to the model developed by Linda Black Elk and others on the Standing Rock reservation. Among the many products the hemp farm will produce is a high quality CBD crude oil that White Hat Botanicals will incorporate into the CBD product line.

White Hat Botanicals Sales Team will increase their financial independence while providing community members with needed and wanted botanicals. Bear Dog Hemp Farm and Health Clinic, the first hemp farm on the Rosebud Reservation, will employ tribal members to plant, harvest and process the first year crop. The clinic will meet the need for natural healthcare on the Rosebud Reservation.

Access to start-up costs would support the economic independence of Lakota women, boost the Oceti Sakowin economy, and support the first hemp farm and all natural health clinic on the Rosebud Reservation.

My project will use new software, including an app of my webpage for marketing, and bookkeeping and graphics design software. Hardware will require a MacBook Pro computer upgrade and internet connectivity. Agriculture needs include hemp and herb seeds, berry bushes, drip irrigation, and farm tractor and attachments (raised bed shaper, plastic mulch layers with drip applicators, transplanter with tray racks. Manufacturing equipment includes bottle fillers, racks, and bottling and packaging equipment. Traditional and conventional drying racks, storage, bottles, jars and labels, double boilers, large roaster, industrial mixer and refrigerator. 

The use of a traditional plant, hemp, to reconnect us to our natural healing ways and provide economic opportunities. Developing the hemp farm will support both the establishment of the healthcare clinic while simultaneously providing hemp by-products for sale, one of which is high quality CBD oil. White Hat Botanicals will feature the CBD oil in its product line. While Lakota women entrepreneurs will market botanicals across Oceti Sakowin. 

White Hat Botanicals Sales Team members will also benefit by increasing their financial independence. This creative strategy will provide Team members with a start-up kit, marketing materials, mentorship and special wholesale pricing and an affordable price point for our markets across Oceti Sakowin. Online tools will streamline wholesale distribution. Team Members will receive mentorship training to encourage Make and Takes, sharing practical remedies and offering our line of products. Thereby increasing hands-on knowledge exponentially across Oceti Sakowin. 

White Hat Botanicals recently opened our online store. Wholesale distribution has not yet begun in Oceti Sakowin. The sales team will market botanical products at powwows, gatherings, rodeos, events, conferences, meetings and through their gift shops, tiospayes and networks nationwide. Our team will help us meet the need across Oceti Sakowin for access to affordable quality, community-determined botanicals. 

Have one marketing team member from each of the 14 Oceti Sakowin tribes

Expand hemp farm production, add processing and manufacturing of hemp products to create employemnt; establish health clinic

Develop marketing materials; Create product inventory; Develop marketing strategy; Continue wholesale accounts; Set up Quickbooks; Solidify Team Members; Distribute Botanicals Marketing Kits; Prepare land, plant, harvest, prepare hemp and botanicals; Hands-on Training with Team Members; Planning for health clinic; File non-profit paperwork; Harvest and store seasonal botanicals; Update 2020 marketing strategy; Initiate plans for health clinic; Market hemp by-products; Invest in production storefront for White Hat Botanicals in New Orleans. 

I Initiated an internship with the SalidaGreen Hemp Farm in Colorado; secured SalidaGreen as wholesale CBD supplier and in-kind CBD bulk order. I Rebranded my product line with a female Lakota graphic designer. I launched my website, featuring my CBD product line.

This particular Solve funding model is a prayer answered for an opportunity to apply for funding to support both my business and community organizing work. Several weeks ago i was told that this kind of opportunity did not exist, that my only options were business investors.

My passion is making botanicals and creating a green pharmacy to help my relatives. Solve support will give my vision the boost it needs to be successful. 

Member of the Indigenous Women’s Advisory Council of the L’eau Est La Vie Camp; Contract Grants Manager for Louisiana Rise; Board Member of the Native American Community Board of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center. 

I would like to work organizations on production and manufacturing using hemp and solar energy systems. I want to create hemp products for our community that are alternatives to single-use plastics in particular.