Company and founder
A family name. A standard of answerability.
Lone Fight Systems LLC is an Indigenous-owned, independent Pennsylvania limited liability company based in Carlisle. Darren Lone Fight founded it to connect research with practical systems for responsibilities he has encountered as a scholar, institution-builder, and descendant.
Why repatriation
“PAVA began with what I kept wishing existed.”
Repatriation is where that work stops being abstract. My relatives are buried in the Carlisle Indian Industrial School cemetery, five minutes from my office. I have encountered repatriation from both sides of the institutional boundary: helping an institution think through what it holds and what it owes, working alongside Tribal Nations bringing relatives home, and writing to museums as a descendant seeking their return. I know what the paperwork looks like from each chair. PAVA began with what I kept wishing existed.
The family name
This company carries a family name, on purpose. In 2005, my grandfather Edward Lone Fight, a former Chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes, told the Army Corps of Engineers that our people are connected to our lands mentally, spiritually, psychologically, culturally, traditionally, and historically. Lone Fight Systems begins from that relation. Everything we build is downstream of the obligation it names. The name is the standard we answer to.
Founder
Darren Lone Fight
Darren Lone Fight is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes—the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
He is a professor of American Studies at Dickinson College and the founding director of what is now the Jim Thorpe Center for the Futures of Native Peoples.
His work connects Indigenous art and philosophy, archives and interfaces, public humanities, and the translation of research into working systems.
Read more of Darren’s workLone Fight Systems LLC is independent of and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Dickinson College.
Start a conversation
What are you working on?
Bring a question, a system that needs attention, or a project you want to carry forward.