KYLE, S.D. – Organizers say they have received preliminary approval for the contours of a credit union that will serve the Lakota Indians, also known as the Sioux, at their Pine Ridge Reservation here.
The Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation covers 70,000 square miles in the western third of South Dakota and is home to 40,000 Native Americans, but it does not have a single bank or credit union.
The field of membership will include anyone who lives, works, worships or attends school on the reservation and those who belong to reservation-based organizations, totaling about 40,000 people, and the credit union will have a low-income designation. Organizers say they have commitments for more than $600,000 of non-member deposits so far.
The Native American charter is being funded by a $150,000 grant from the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions fund to the Lakota Funds, a CDFI sponsored by the Lakota Nation.
The proposed Lakota FCU will offer secured and unsecured personal loans; savings accounts; ATM cards with access to no-fee ATMs in each of the nine reservation districts; direct deposit for paychecks; and low-fee check cashing and money order services. Eventually, it could be approved to offer checking accounts.
NCUA last year granted a charter to another Native American tribe, the Saginaw Chippewa Indians of Michigan.
