prAna: Sustainable Clothing

If you ever happen to be passing through a Lakota (Sioux) Indian Reservation in South Dakota, you just might catch a glimpse of someone wearing prAna clothes. And while it could certainly be because they purchased the clothes themselves, it also could be because of one of the donations I regularly make to the Native American Heritage Association (NAHA).

NAHA is one of only four percent of charities that has been consecutively given five four-star ratings by Charity Navigator. Charity Navigator ranks charities according to their fulfillment of their mission and the amount of funds and contributions that go directly to the purported recipients of that charity’s intentions (as opposed to administrative or fundraising expenses).

For me, deciding to contribute to NAHA came hand in hand with learning more about the historical plight of the American Indians, particularly in this area of the country. It’s a shameful chapter in the nation’s past, and one that certainly wasn’t taught honestly or in its entirety when I was in school. Books such as Black Elk Speaks, by John G. Neihardt; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown; and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, by Peter Matthiessen; among many others available, have helped bring this history to life for me, as have my travels around this area of the country, which is rife with historic battlefields, gravesites, trails, and American Indian artifacts.

Alas, as we all know, a person living in the present cannot undo or take back the atrocities committed by those in the past. All we can do is to strive to not perpetrate those same sorts of injustices in the future, while also attempting to do whatever we can in ways both large and small to help those who are still suffering in our present time from the results of those injustices committed in the past, as so many American Indians are today. We have to realize that the actions of the people in our past do continue to have repercussions in today’s world for so many different groups of people, and to understand that healing them, if it is ever even fully possible, may take many generations.

This is why, in my own small way, I try to do what I can ever so often by giving to NAHA. As a part of prAna’s athlete team, it’s best for me to always be sporting the latest prAna styles and fashions when I’m out climbing or even just out in the community. But this means that I end up with clothes from last season, or two or three years ago, that are still in great condition and have lots more wear left in them. At least once a year, then, I go through my closet and pull out the same amount of clothing that I’m going to be receiving in my next new shipment from prAna. I box up these items, and send them out to NAHA.

I know it’s not much, and I know that some donated clothes don’t even come close to undoing the evils and ills perpetrated on these people as a whole in the past. However, I do believe that every gesture of kindness, however small, helps to rebalance and correct the relationships between human beings, focusing our attention more on what we have in common and less on our individual and cultural differences, both past and present. If we all could realize just a little more every single day, in everything we do and every gesture we make, how much of a potential impact we can have in making others’ lives better by acknowledging our mutual human needs, wants, and connectedness, what a kinder, more united and peaceful world we would live in.

Alli Rainey