Engineer, build, grow, succeed

Our demographics clearly show the remote location of our communities connection to modern infrastructure however with some progress in satellite and local networks we are not totally in the dark . Our roads, communications systems and access to affordable modern advantages are further set back with no positive growth in economic dcevelopement,job creation and the quality of life on Our reservation.

These situations contribute to the social ills that we face everyday and continues to destroy our culture by falling short to the challenges of high poverty, alcohol and substance abuse, poor health care, lack of healthy food resources, high rate of suicide, high crime rate.  

 The communities entirely on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is amonsgt the poorest counties in the United States with over 51.9% below the poverty line, per capita income around $8,768, where the employment rate is 80% and the high school drop out rate of over 60%. 

A modernized infrastructure would bring business opportunities to revitalize economic growth and expand the quality of life on our reservation.

The Ikt'ce Wicasa (Common man) organization champions Lakota solutions to these food, housing, and cultural revitalization challenges.

Housing and Engineering: We’ve developed and built a cutting edge wooden Tipi prototype that is low cost, high wind resistant, integrates renewable energy from wind and solar and sustainable design. These homes are a deployable and viable solution to the extreme lack of housing on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and could also be used in business and health care contexts. Furthermore, they are a huge improvement to the trailers common on the reservation in both durability and livability.

Food: We take a holistic approach to home building—the Tipi home is incomplete without the medicinal and edible plants our culture has used for millennia. In addition to building, we establish perennial and annual food systems to reconnect with the land, improve health outcomes, and produce beautiful habitat for wildlife and people.

Culture and Workforce development: The Tipi home and Lakota food system are a culturally appropriate solution to our biggest challenges on the reservation. Living in this good way will connect us to the land, each other, our past, and provide hope for the future for young people and elders alike. Training young people in construction and regenerative agriculture informed by Lakota culture will give them pride and opportunities they can use to grow their communities art, science, and cultural knowledge.

Our solution will serve the young adults who are working to better their lives and improve the community they live in.

The current situation regarding the young adults and the elder members of our community have little opportunity to expand their lives in a positive manner. The high poverty, poor health care, has gripped the people's ability to make a stand for a better tomorrow 

Our solution will bring together the young adults to create a vision of what they woulkd like to achieve while addressing the needs of our members. One example will be a museum, a place to record their start for the children to see. Our history needs to be felt and strongly understood that we are good people of this land we come from, a strong culture, a prideful people who have a compassion to help one another.

Our solution will serve the Spotted Owl Community located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

The population within our community is mostly young adults and middle aged parents who may have a job or not. 

The lack of economic opportunity is the main set back for many communities and with our solution we can gather the data to pin point the needs of importance to build a community driven plan. 

I'm a life long resident of Spotted Owl Community  and living here I Came to experience the results the lack of economic opportunities for families wanting to better their lives.

Our solution comes from the cultural teachings that give us the tools neccessary for people to connect with our knowledge  and also modernized our traditional homes. The tipi project will bring together the community as we build the tipi home for the the purpose of modernizing the home.

The modern tipi design gives us a connection to our past and also the key to bring our traditions back into our communities .

The prototype is being built and tested as we explore other design features in wind and solar for a more user friendly building process. Eco friendly materials will be are focus however we are Utilizing recyclable materials where we can to help offset some cost.

Our focus is to have a youth design team to help integrate a virtual reality component of community change to present to schools as a solution learning tool. 

The purpose of our solutions component is to bring out the problems that are communities face and problem solve by creating a virtual reality for the kids to engage in. 

As a member of the Oglala Lakota a Sioux tribe and a business owner I have been in the communities through out our homelands and have connected with people on that level.

Our solution is innovative in  ways in that it bridges our cultural teachings with today’s technologies. This allows us to engineer our cultural architecture for modern living, evolve micro agriculture to re-establish our traditional diet, and provide a sustainable family growth and wealyth creation blueprint. 

We also explore the latest advances in renewable energy, finance networks, and guide all of this work with Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Our  goal in the first year is to establish the tipi dwelling in our community as a cultural art space and community garden. This will inspire the minds of the community to further develop the space and build the innovation and community driven model of our solution.

The next five years will be building up the project's impact in each phase leading to a successful upstart business. As our project gets off the ground and serves communities, we expect external funder interest and grand dollars that can expand our capacity and team size.

After community deployment, we will survey community members to gather data on use and satisfaction with the tipi community space. We will also collect energy use data to assess how we can better install renewable energy on future designs. For the food project, we will take detailed notes regarding plant growth and agricultural techniques that are effective in our bioregion here in South Dakota.

My theory of change comes from the experience of living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for my entire life and through my 20 plus years experience as an entrepreneur. I know that to change peoples lives, they must be empowered to spur the change that they want to see in their communities. I also know the importance of including multiple different perspectives to pursue change so that we can co-create durable and effective solutions to our problems. Most importantly, My theory of change is rooted in my cultural values as a Lakota and our lifeways that have allowed us to live and thrive for thousands of years in our home.

We are primarily engineers who have pioneered the wooden tipi dwelling for residential and business use. Additionally, we use renewable energy technology to provide sustainable, low cost energy. Lastly, we use traditional agricultural technology, such as the three sisters planting method and ancestral seed varieties to provide food for humans and habitat for wildlife.

We seek to provide low cost housing through our tipi dwelling model. As we grow, we seek to partner with local, on reservation baks and credit unions to provide loans and financing for families who want to build and live in our tipi homes. Once implementation occurs, we expect a high capacity to expand and grow this business. The market on the Pine Ridge Reservation is in desperate need of affordable housing and a workforce to construct it, and we plan to fill both of those market Niches.

Once we start to receive income from purchases of our tipi units, we will be able to invest in our team, workforce, and streamline our production and manufacturing  capacity.

As of right now, we are in the prototype/ proof of concept phase to appeal to investors and external funding like government programs and grants.

We plan to build 10- unit tipi home communities that will provide a steady and reliable source of income for our organization. With this income, we will be able to grow, build more units, and eventually provide financing to those who purchase our tipi model. One of the reasons we are enthusiastic about joining the MIT Solve community is to further develop our business model.

We are still in the prototype phase, but have received encouraging interest from our tribal government who could provide us with contracts to build in the future.