During the last Ice Age, indigenous people migrated from Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia to North America by crossing the Bering Land Bridge, which connected Asia and Alaska when sea levels were lower.
The indigenous tribes (before Europe colonization) were pretty fancy and sophisticated for their time with advanced agriculture, mound-buildings and other impressive architectures, and even urban centers. They had extensive trade networks.
Crossing the history of Iceland and Norway, there are stories on Norse expeditions and encounters with the tribes and skills exchanged on urbanization, trade, medicine and survival.
Late 15 century when Christopher Columbus (sponsored by the Spanish Crown) found America, everything changed. The Columbian Exchange brought new animals, plants, and along it came diseases that killed millions of natives who were not immune to it.
It is said that 90% of the indigenous people died (55 million) from smallpox, measles and influenza.
The colonization led to many conflicts and displacement of American Indian tribes from their land. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act forced the Cherokee tribes among many others to leave their lands in southeastern states to the Indian territory in present day Oklahoma. Famously known as the Trail of Tears thousands died from starvation, cold weather and sickness while forced to migrate on foot. It was one of the darkest chapters of American Native history.
There were many wars in the 19th century where the indigenous groups fought back for their sovereignty, land and resources (esp gold) against the US gov’t - some of the famous wars : the Wounded Knee Massacre, Red Cloud's War, Navajo Wars, Black Hawk War, and more . These conflicts often arose due to encroachment on indigenous lands, broken treaties, and attempts to forcibly remove native peoples from their territories.
4 centuries after colonization, in 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the country. Yet, discrimination and challenges persisted, including limited voting rights, unequal opportunities, and treaty violations. While the Act was a step forward, it didn't fully solve the systemic inequalities faced by Native American communities.
Fast forward to today, often what I see is this negative perception and prejudices towards the Indian communities as non-progressive, living on government handouts, drunkards and more.
When you think about it, tribes that were incredibly brilliant and happy, pre colonization - were ripped apart for centuries and even now - constantly reminded that they are not good enough. There’s Maria Tailchief, first US prima ballerina from the Osage tribe, Jim Thorpe, of the Sac and Fox tribe, which the King of Sweden considered the greatest athlete of all times, and many more successful American Indians yet the good stories are often forgotten.
There’s this idea by Albert Bandura (a Canadian American psychologist) on ‘self efficacy’ - which talks about how much one believes in their own capacity to achieve goals. If one has high self efficacy, then they have stronger belief in themselves which leads to stronger drive in achieving that goal.
Many underserved communities around the world have similar challenges of low confidence, low motivation and it becomes a negative cycle.
I’m sure we too have found ourselves stuck in this loop occasionally - after all we are only human - and we just have to find ways to come out of it - absorb anything positive, build ourselves up.
Often people might think handouts would work for underserved communities but I think what really works is finding ways to build up the community from within.
Empower them to help themselves. Give them tools that can help them identify and solve the problems that they face in their communities.
There are so many ways Bitcoin and Nostr can empower these communities. Even teaching financial literacy, economic empowerment, and self-sufficiency and enabling them to explore their creativity and innovation would be a pretty amazing step forward.
After all, entrepreneurship is about finding opportunities in the midst of problems.
