LAKOTA

Since Fall of 2017 the LAKOTA team here at Purdue has been combating issues relating to food sovereignty on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota while assisting with cultural learning on OLC campus.  Pine Ridge is one of the poorest counties in the United States and suffers from a lack of access to fresh foods.  Many residents must travel long distances in order to get essentials.  The divided nature of the reservations combined with rampant poverty has made it difficult for the Lakota people to maintain their culture and communities.

Throughout its four years of existence, the Purdue LAKOTA team has worked on multiple projects that face these issues and more on Pine Ridge. The team has erected a greenhouse on the OLC campus to provide fresh food and cultural learning to people on campus and in the surrounding areas. In response to covid-19, the team created a database of COVID cases to keep residents of Pine-Ridge informed on the status of the pandemic in their local areas.