[Music] on the head and [Music] I [Music] work nutrition they should be tell home cars in there free samples over here Tonka bar buffalo meat come give it a try free samples of Buffalo it's great for riding a bike come get a free sample here's a brave guy he wants to try this Buffalo meat out come give it a shot man beef Buffalo is way better than beef and it's better for you all naturally cured it's a like a new allnatural high protein low carbohydrated energy bar and it's made from Prairie raised Buffalo and tart sweet cranber less cholesterol than scky salmon or skinless chicken breast it's based on a Native American recipe was snow and they would mix up berries and fruit with that Buffalo cuz the hats in the fruit would act like a natural preservative we have a brand new flavor Apple orange we're brand new here in New York it's called a Tonka bar isn't that good so what's the word Tonka mean uh Tonka means big big or big or great where are you from We're from the pine rid Indian reservation in Southwestern South [Music] Dakota you're listening to KI Le FM radio the voice of this great lot Nation coming at you off of porcupine view at 90.1 on your fm dial the high today 98° you know if you think of the exact geographic center of the United States it's the center of the northern tip of the Black Hills which is Pine Ridge this is ke FM radio the voice of this great Lo Nation the Piner reservation is one of the most isolated places within the 48 states of of the United States it encompasses an area about 125 Mi long and 75 Mi wide it's the second largest Indian reservation in the country this is home of the oala Lakota people the Lakota people's creation story says they were born from the Black Hills and there's this relationship that the Lakota people have with the Buffalo they believe they're interdependent Nations that as long as the Buffalo survive the people will survive the last time Lota people had a functioning economy it was based on the buffalo buffalo provided their food housing tools shelter medicine toys clothes everything their entire economy was based on the Buffalo and the Buffalo were destroyed by a government policy to open the West up for [Music] settlement General Sheridan said something the effect for every Buffalo you kill you kill two Indians in a very short period of time we practically destroyed all of them and then we created a system in which our government provided rations so the reservation was never designed to have a functioning economy it was designed to support the non-indian economies that surrounded [Music] it when oal were put on this reservation over a 100 years ago everything was taken away the whole way of life the culture the language the spirituality the economy now our people have to take our own destiny into our own hands because we've seen what a 100 Years of dependency has done you have 75% unemployment rate you have people living on $5 5200 income a year you have families that have three to four generations living in one household because there's no housing we have to change this so the idea behind Tonka you know big biggest is could we build a business that becomes strong enough to have a positive impact on the economy of the community the health of the land and the health of the Buffalo so yeah it's a big idea but we don't really have any room for for little ideas right now I was trying to see if there's a deadline on the CD Mark was doing marketing for nonprofits on the reservation and him and I were working together for about 8 years on marketing campaigns cdfi is during one of our Chamber of Commerce meetings our buffalo producers were saying they needed more avenues for sales for their buffalo meet so we looked at some of the traditional foods and wasna is buffalo meat and berries and we thought what if that was in a bar form and it came as a snack product we spent about a year developing a product and we figured how to package it and the annual Black Hills po was about a month away and so we went to the Black Hills Power it's a very big Power like 10,000 people but we weren't really ready to do a launch we didn't go there to sell anything what we thought we'd do is get a bunch of feedback meet with a bunch of people and try to figure out how to raise the money for a launch and we passed out product and people got really really excited the local paper picked it up then the Statewide paper picked it up and then the media completely blew up on it we made the cover of the taste section the New York Times Associated Press picked it up once it got an AP it went literally around the world it was on the cover provda we had 4,000 simultaneous hits which brought our website down because we never imagine that we would get the response all right all right this here Steve I can go ahead and email you the information this was the fall of 07 and we're starting to really take off every month is twice as big is the month before we had invested all this money and we were making more product we moved our manufacturing to a bigger plant we're scrambling 100 mph and we're trying to keep up we get to August of 08 and the economy completely locked up everything just stopped in midair the news each day seems unrelentingly bad many small businesses are already in danger of being swamped or completely Swept Away consum confidence has plunged this could be the most serious recession in decades July of8 I bet we did $20,000 and August of o08 I bet we did one or two in every entrepreneur's life there's what I call the perbal cliff moment which is do you stop or do you step off that Cliff because once you step off that Cliff there's no going back you have so much money into it that you can't turn around there in poker it's called all in that's where that additional comes out of you know the 6 thou 6,000 now 7,000 plus the 12,500 if we failed it would probably be what is expected cuz it's the norm here there's a long history of good ideas on this reservation not very many of those good ideas ever get executed and I kind of felt [Music] like if we didn't move forward we're going to be saying we would have could have should have for the rest of our life so you borrow over a million dollars sign everything away put it all on the line or say well it's just not for us it's the scariest thing in your life to say we're going for it but I thought okay if we don't go for it what's going to change [Music] nothing so yeah if I have to put up my car my house whatever yeah I'll do [Music] it and that's right at the time when social networking was coming about Myspace was really hot Facebook was just starting up and the employees were telling us we really need to Market through you know these social networks and I'm like Market through what are you talking about right through here and they kept saying just let us show you what we can do they were talking about the product just having conversations leading people to our web page and we could talk to people in Arkansas in you know Gallop New Mexico in Canada in Oregon about this healthy snack product which is amazing because we're one of the most isolated areas in the United States but for the first time the internet brought down those barriers of isolation and people could order online and we could just ship it out social media marketing kept Native American Natural Foods alive for 2 years until the large wholesale Market start booing up we've never bought an ad anywhere outside of Google those 100,000 people a month who come to our website and interact with us on our social media that's the core of how we've built this brand to be in stores in all 50 states REI is one of our largest clients we just got into Whole Foods once those start opening up that's our biggest Revenue stream now we have to put together this power you know this presentation for the Costco show on the 11th we're building a natural food company a national brand in the middle of a USDA food desert most of the people in our company not only have they never worked in a food company a lot of them have never even have a full-time job like this before I started working at T Bar bus tables wash dishes I get a bed and breakfast for a huge Resort back breaking work for a little bit of money so it's Native American Natural Foods came along ended up getting a new car paid it off got my own trailer and paid it off it's huge it's awesome I have money to live off of without having to depend on the government but don't have a lot of stuff here on the reservation that you need to live everyone on the reservation leaves when they get paid yeah have trve hour and a half almost every payday they don't have a shoe store in a reservation you'd have to go up to Rapid to get shoes to keep your feet dry it's estimated that somewhere between $250 and $300 million a year goes onto the reservation in everything from EBT to federal grants to private grants it turns over less than once and then just leaves the reservation and so it doesn't create jobs or [Music] opportunity a healthy economy turns the dollar over more than seven times in a community which means your dollar circulates through your area seven times you receive it you cash it you spend money on food clothes gas entertainment child care all of that is turning the dollar over more than once right now we're shipping Blended shipments out of d2000 so to really have a thriving economy we have to have for-profit businesses so that our children and Grand children can stay in their community and have jobs to support their family they can buy groceries uh buy clothes buy shoes so to change the future here we have to create a private sector so then that's why we got into Native American Natural Foods basket idea is to have it in this I view myself as a fourth or fifth generation activist my parents always taught us that you can focus on problems and get overwhelmed by them or focus on Solutions towards [Music] them the poverty conditions here are inhumane they're not acceptable I think we're short like 5,000 houses we have the shortest life expectancy in North America none of that is acceptable so let's attack those problems and that's what the community here is doing so we don't view that Native American Natural Foods is operating in isolation it isn't like we're going to do this and create this change on our own we have to do it together it's like with Thunder Valley as we grow and our employees grow where are they going to live where are they going to buy houses Thunder Valley started as a Community Development Corporation our goal has always been to build a a new develop an actual physical new community here on Pine Ridge Native American Natural Foods helped incubate thund Valley we provided them office space and any kind of help we could we also recognized that we didn't want to just do housing here we didn't want to just create a Housing Development we wanted to create places for businesses to be to what this development that we're doing here at Thunder Valley represents is really about bringing together all kinds of different um diverse members of our community and collaborating on what we want for the future of our tribal Nation there's not one rental on PID there's not one home for sale and so a big part of what we're doing in this development is we're saying that opportunity already exist there in fact over half of our Workforce that we currently have on Pine Ridge has already a job and has the ability to either rent own lease or buy and we need to meet them this is a straw Bell house and so what we're doing in housing is to respond to a market that already exists Pro people that has actually St there's one house under construction but in the next 7 years you're going to see a community be built here and there's going to be dozens and dozens of families that are going to have homes that wouldn't have homes otherwise a lot of our employees look at Thunder Valley as something they would probably want to participate in the future because Thunder Valley is providing this new vision of a place where you could own a home a place where you could live in a safe healthy Community there is way more opportunity on Pine Ridge than people really think that there is all you economists all you Bankers all you investors all you people that says that there that this can't be done on Pine Rich BS it can be done and we're going to do it and that's a solution that's a solution for housing that's a solution for jobs it's about empowering people to take control of their own lives not waiting for somebody to come save us not waiting for somebody to come fix our problems for us what is poverty it's the perception that nobody has any options that there that all your options have been taken away and that your choices are limited to just living in a welfare state and I think that's really what we're changing with each entrepreneur whether it's Thunder Valley or Native American Natural Foods or a group of Quilters or somebody providing horseback riding to tourists each one of those is there are options there are opportunity absolutely would to be part of changing growth for the company I feel honored you know I feel good about it 5 10 years from now I'd at least want to have a home maybe by the time I have that then I can move on to Growing myself as a family it wouldn't bother me so much if I failed but to know that I let down the staff that's what would hurt that's what would really [Music] hurt you know the blood of our ancestors lay on this land they gave their lives so that our people could Thrive well I don't want to let them down it's my responsibility to take that and to build something that will enhance Our Lives yeah to make life better for the next Generations Against All Odds we exist and so you think about coming from Kyle in the middle of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation you have to say yeah that's successful we finally turn the corner we're profitable we've created 13 jobs we're in a project right now to create a path to ownership for all of our employees so that this business will be there forever and Thrive and help the community so that it never ends up in the hands of external investors who might decide that it should be located somewhere else we're going to break $2 million in sales this year but we feel like we need to get up to you know $20 million or Beyond so that we are an economic force that becomes part of the economic reemergence of the oota people so yes we think we're successful but we also think we just got [Music] started a lot of people believe that the buffalo have returned in order to help heal the people because they're dependent on each other so now that the people have helped restore the Buffalo the Buffalo are going to help restore the [Music] people it may sound like a romantic Theory but it's real [Music] economics this film was created with the support of American Express wherever the journey leads American Express is proud to help serve small businesses [Music]
