Tiny house project could help impoverished Lakota tribe

Collins, who lives in Elmore and owns Shine Communications, considers the Lakota as her extended family, or “tiospaye.”

“I am a hunka to a number of people,” Collins said. “You’re involved in every aspect of their lives. Their family becomes your family.”

She chats with members of the tribe daily, visits at least yearly, and last year founded Lakota Tiny House Nation, a nonprofit that helps them build affordable, sustainable housing.

She estimates the reservation is about 4,000 homes short of the number it needs. As a result, more than 20 extended family members are sometimes crammed into a single home.

Collins started Tiny House after several young people on the reservation committed suicide.

She wanted to do something to give the Lakota community hope, while providing an opportunity to learn skills they could use to find work outside the reservation. She also wants them to be able to “pay it forward” by helping their family members build tiny homes.

A 500-square-foot, two-bedroom house costs less than $20,000 to build.

Construction on the first tiny house started last summer and volunteers will return this spring to complete the work. Tiny house expert Peter King of Bakersfield led the construction and a Colorado company donated a roof.

Collins would like to see 4,000 homes constructed eventually, enough to fix the reservation’s housing shortage.

“We want to continue to build these and teach families to build them so they can pass it on,” Collins said.

Because of the small scale of the houses, several can be built on a piece of land owned by a single family, allowing members to manage the property collectively.

Collins will speak about Lakota Tiny House Nation as a guest of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stowe on Sunday, Feb. 7, at 4 p.m. at St. John’s in the Mountains.

Hunka

Collins remembers being moved to tears when, while researching a story for a weekly Vermont folklore radio show, she learned how badly the Abenakis had been abused by the Europeans who settled in New England and Canada.

She was aghast when she read documents detailing how they were often the victims of forced sterilizations during Vermont’s eugenics movement in the early 20th century.

“The more I read, the more horrified I was until I decided that I needed to be connected to something good,” Collins said. “We can’t undo the past, but we can do something to stem the damage.”

She connected with a nonprofit group that arranged direct sponsorships of children living on reservations. It put her in touch with a family living on Pine Ridge. Two decades later, she estimates she has formed friendships with over a hundred people on the reservation.

She has donated her services as a communications and public relations expert, organized fundraisers and special events, and worked as an advocate for the Lakota people.

Tough conditions

Pine Ridge is the eighth-largest American Indian reservation in the U.S. and the poorest. Unemployment is between 80 and 85 percent, access to health care is inadequate, and many residents live in homes without electricity or running water.

Depression, alcoholism and domestic abuse are common and many students drop out of high school before graduation.

Average life spans are among the lowest in the U.S., with men living an average of 48 years and women an average of 52 years.

Collins estimates that 15,000 of the Lakota’s 40,000 tribal members live on the 3,468-square-mile reservation in the southwest corner of North Dakota, near the Nevada border.

“The Lakota culture is a culture of poverty,” Collins said. “It masks their true culture. They cling to their culture fiercely, but that’s hard. Documentaries don’t report how dynamic the culture is and what people are doing to preserve it while living in abject poverty.”

Collins, an eighth-generation Vermonter, is French and Irish and has no American Indian ancestors that she’s aware of, but she feels a deep connection to the Lakota.

“No, I can’t say I’m Lakota, but I’m hunka,” Collins said. “I have a soul attachment. It’s very real. There’s a lot of joy and heartache.”

For more information on the Lakota Tiny House Nation project, or to make a donation: lakotatinyhousenation.com.