by Cheyenne Rivera | Apr 12, 2022 | Commentary |
Before European settlers explored America, it is approximated that 18 million indigenous people called North America their home. Decades of war, disease, discrimination, removal, and termination rapidly brought those numbers to only 5.2 million today. Today, there are about 574 federally recognized and 63 state recognized Native American tribes in the United States. After losing an abundance of land and forceful relocation to reservations, modern Native Americans fight for sovereignty and cultural and economic survival. Today, 1 in 3 Native Americans are living in poverty, with a median income of $23,000 a year. In 2009, a new kind of economic technology emerged—crypto currency. A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that is secured by cryptography, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. Many cryptocurrencies are decentralized networks based on blockchain technology—a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers. A defining feature of cryptocurrencies is that they are generally not issued by any central authority, rendering them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation. In 2009, Bitcoin software and mining was the first digital currency made available to the public. As of March 2022, there are over 18,000 crypto currencies in existence throughout the world. Native American tribal leaders caught wind of the successes of cryptocurrency and joined in on the business of creating, mining, and selling digital currency for two main reasons: (1) to empower Native Americans through a modern declaration of sovereign status and independence and (2) to boost economic activity and general income in Indian Country. In 2014, the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota adopted MazaCoin as...
