Have You Had Your Wacantognaka Today?

Tables at a wedding celebration piled high with gifts ... for the guests. Coming back from a funeral with new kitchen items in hand. Going to a community event and being one of hundreds to be fed a full meal for free, even though you're a stranger to the area. Having a friend miss work to take care of you when you catch the flu. Knowing that, no matter how little you have, and how little those around you have, you will never be without a roof above your head if you only ask.

And in return, a willingness on your part to do whatever you can possibly do for someone else who needs your help.

This is Wacantognaka, the Lakota word for generosity — and a core virtue that palpably guides the society, even (or perhaps, especially) in places like the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where resources are often few and far in between. You may have read in high school history classes that, in the past, the chief of an Indian village was often the poorest, because he gave to others before he took for himself.

"What you give away, you keep; what you keep you lose," one Lakota saying cautions. It's a concept that is sometimes difficult to grasp in a capitalist economy, but my understanding of it is this: no assets come with us to the grave. Houses, bank accounts and flatscreen TVs will stay behind. This part — the idea that at the end of life, you lose everything you've tried to keep — is logical, easy to internalize. The first half of the saying: "What you give away, you keep," is much more open to interpretation. What I learned living in a community where giving is the norm — when my car battery was stolen, for example, my coworker jumped up and offered to install an extra one he had at home — is that the sheer act of becoming a generous giver and gracious receiver lightens the burden of materialism.

This was not an easy thing to learn. Accustomed to the free market rather than a "here, take this for free" market, I at first questioned the wisdom of practices like giveaways at powwows. When the nonprofit I worked for this summer set up a table at the Oglala Nation Powwow and piled a whole year's worth of outside donations ranging from crayons to plush toys on it to giveaway, I just about had an aneurysm. "Shouldn't we be saving these? Everything's going to be gone in minutes!" I cried out in distress. The Lakota woman with me smiled gently. "Donations will keep coming," she replied softly. "But the opportunity to make somebody smile today, that only comes once." She was right about that, and more — because the more we gave, the more I found myself smiling too.

Not all poor people are happy. But so many studies have shown us that they're generally no unhappier than rich people, and even more generous. This is hard to comprehend in a capitalist market: having less, giving more and being happier overall. If this recession teaches us anything, (I'm not talking about  "don't buy houses beyond your means" or "make wise stock portfolio choices,") I hope that lesson is this: we don't need everything we have, but someone else might.

Photo credit: Ashley Eberhart