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Welcome to the Sumter Cheraw Indians website! |
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Welcome to our website we hope you enjoy yourself and see us again soon. Please register your account to access all the many features on this website.
Posted on Wednesday, March 25
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Together Again as One People With the Same Goals |
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It is with great pride that both factions are merging for the betterment of our people under the leadership of Chief Ralph Justice Oxendine. WE hope to get together very soon and talk to all members about this decision and how it came about. We would like to hear from all members and potential members; just keep it clean please. We have tried very hard to stick to that in the past. This will be the real test as to who has their heart in what we are doing. We have exciting plans and ideas that we need to talk to everyone about and ALOT of mending to do; so we are trying to come up with a date soon, very informal; to sit around in the circle and pray for guidance and wisdom. Please let us know by email at oxendineralph@yahoo.com to let us know if you have a particular date that would be good for you.
As we are working on our website; please keep checking on the calendar for upcoming events.
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We're Back! |
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Hello Tribal Members. I am delighted to inform you that we now have our original web site back! We now own .org, .net, .com and .biz. Please visit either site. If you are registered with .com or any of the others; when you log in, it will take you to this site. Please enjoy and remember, feel free to post what ever you would like to let others know. Please, keep it clean.
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The Indian Ten Commandments |
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1. Treat the Earth and all that dwell therein with respect.
2. Show great respect for your fellow beings.
3. Remain close to the Great Spirit.
4. Work together for the benefit of all Mankind.
5. Give assistance and kindness wherever needed.
6. Do what you know to be right.
7. Look after the well-being of Mind and Body.
8. Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater good.
9. Be truthful and honest at all times.
10. Take full responsibility for your actions.
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Ramping Up Economic Development Policy for Tribes |
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By Duane Champagne February 15, 2012
Maybe you’ve heard: The Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs has a deputy for policy and economic development. In recent years, that office has played an increasingly significant part in tribal government planning and goals.
A good thing, too. Because if reservation communities can’t continue to enter into the marketplace and create wealth and income for tribal members, they will remain impoverished and at the mercy of the federal government.
Just consider the numbers. According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate for reservation Indians in 2010 was 28.4 percent, while the poverty rate for all Americans was 15.3 percent. Poverty rates on some reservations, like the San Carlos and Pine Ridge, can be more than 50 percent.
By now, we all know the miseries that come with being poor: substandard education, ill health, chronic unemployment, bad housing and pitiful economic opportunities among them. Not to mention the pathetically limited resources for political and cultural practice and renewal. It’s a grim fact that Indian poverty, both reservation and urban, remains a central feature of contemporary Indian life.
Fortunately, Washington knows this. And so it is encouraging to see the federal bureaucracy devoting at least some management resources to policy and economic development issues. As it is, these activities are mandated by congressional legislation.
But plenty of challenges remain. Take the Office of Tribal Self-Governance, which is devoted to contract negotiations and monitoring of federal contracts. It carries out necessary and important tasks for tribal governments. But it is not engaged in helping tribal governments and communities prepare for market competition. Nor does it handle culturally acceptable ways to approach market enterprise.
Witness, too, the Office of Indian Gaming, which assists tribes in negotiating compacts with state governments. All well and good. But as Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently noted, less than half of federally recognized Indian reservations have gaming establishments, and only about 232 are engaged in casino-style gaming. “Most tribal gaming operations are quite small,” he said, “and are located in rural areas.”
And then there is gaming revenue itself. It has helped many tribes provide needed services such as housing, safety, health and education. Gaming funds have been a significant building block for some tribal governments and communities to obtain greater self-governance. Nonetheless, Indian gaming successes are limited. For most Indian communities, gaming just can’t provide enough support for economically sustainable empowerment.
Granted, the assistant secretary’s policy and economic development office has begun to more directly address some important issues. These include economic financing, training in entrepreneurship and management, marketing of energy and minerals, economic capacity building and workforce training. The office recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development for future collaboration on economic development for Indian tribes. A major consultation initiative to hear the voice of tribal leaders about proposed revision of leasing rules affecting residents, business leasing, and wind and solar power leasing issues will be completed by this summer.
And including Indian cultural values and community goals within economic development planning is becoming an important priority. Members of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota collected $117 million in oil royalties in 2011, thanks in part to cooperative relations between the DOI and the tribal government to support environmentally safe oil extraction. The division of energy and mineral development is actively promoting environmentally friendly, or green, job creation for reservation communities. Since 2009, the division of capital investment has guaranteed more than $209 million in loans to Indian individual and tribal businesses that are designed to benefit reservation economies.
Before you get too hopeful, though, remember this: The total budget for Indian policy and economic development is only about $40 million, of which about $25 million goes to salaries. That’s a pittance. When it comes to investment and culturally agreeable economic development on Indian reservations, the DOI isn’t doing nearly enough.
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“ I am poor and naked but I am the chief of a nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love. ”
—Red Cloud
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