The lowest life expectancy in America.
89% unemployment rate.
70% school drop out rate.
A Child mortalitY Rate 3X Higher than ANYWHERE in the USA.
Pine Ridge is a lost community of 40,000 native American’s in South Dakota. Lakota native Patricia has had enough. Enough pity, enough pain, enough blame.
Patricia and project partner Jason, whom she met 20 years ago while trapped in a snowstorm with Jane Goodall, are leading a team of rebel farmers who demand a better food system. They demand self sufficiency. They demand acknowledgement of systemic injustice against her people. The healing starts through growing healthy food.
For decades, the Lakota living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota have been decimated by poverty, disease, and genocide. Today, Patricia Hammond is changing the narrative. She’s on a personal mission to save her community's humanity and it all starts with rebuilding the Lakota Food System.
It’s difficult to sustain hope when you’ve never had any, but Patricia believes she had to start somewhere. And it’s literally from the ground up. She’s planted a seed in her community, encouraging her people to learn to care for themselves by growing their own food. The Lakota people are from the land, and they need to get back to it in order to survive as a people and as a community. It’s Food Sovereignty, from seed to table.
Patricia’s pioneering project REBEL EARTH encourages sustainable farming, providing an antidote to the Lakota’s generational trauma. It combats addiction, promotes better physical and mental health, and provides some of the only fresh food available on the Reservation.
But it’s an everyday struggle for Patricia. The Reservation has harsh weather conditions, her small trailer has no amenities, and she battles chronic back pain and bipolar disorder. Crippled by the impact of covid, the project falls to its knees for a few years.
As her health returns, she and her business partner, Jason spend their days in an uphill battle, they’re either helping others plant and care for their crops or encouraging disbelievers into joining their cause. And in their spare time they write grants to sustain their program. Change isn’t easy, especially if you’re promising hope.
With summers around the world heating up and ice caps melting fast, REBEL EARTH is a blueprint we may all have to follow soon. It could be a bellwether not only for the future of Patricia and the Lakota Nation, but the future of humanity.