Reprint from May 26, 2022 and June 2, 2022
Third of four parts
Winona LaDuke writes on Alex White Plume, a leader of the Ogala Lakota tribe in the Spring 2021 edition of Yes! magazine.
“More than 20 years ago, Alex White Plume, a leader of the Oglala Lakota, planted his first hemp crop on Wounded Knee Creek, on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. I call White Plume ‘the Hemperer.’ He’s considered to be one of the grandfathers of the cannabis economy for Native people.
“That said, we have a lot of experience here in small field crops, horse cultivation, and traditional varieties. We grew in small plots, hand seeded, and in a larger 20-acre plot, mechanically harvested with 40-year-old equipment.
“We put in a field with horses because some of our partnerships here involve not only our horse-drawn agriculture, but those of our Amish neighbors. We’ve come to collaborate, as we have similar interests in terms of technology and geography.
“We provided seeds to tribes throughout the region, all interested in the same questions: How do you grow it? And, what can you do with it?
“What we found is that the plant will teach you: Don’t be in a rush. We are re-creating an industry from the seed to the product—whether smokable or for manufacturing. Some tribes are looking at materials processing—car parts, bags,—others are looking at hempcrete, an improvement on concrete because of its sustainability and the fact that it is a carbon sink.
“There’s a lot of room in the New Green Revolution. After all, if you are going to change the materials economy—well, the whole economy—you will need a lot of producers and some folks in manufacturing. That’s the goal. Indeed, if hemp’s potential is realized, we can transform the materials economy, and that’s revolutionary. That’s our work now, to investigate, vet, and find technologies and economic models that can be replicated.
Continued next week