Sovereign Entrepreneurs by Courtney Lewis

Author:Courtney Lewis [Lewis, Courtney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, Native American Studies, History, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
ISBN: 9781469648606
Google: o6ORDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2019-04-10T05:14:07+00:00

Entrepreneurship’s Place in Development

It is an exercise of economic sovereignty when tribal governments and communities decide what types of businesses to allow in Indian Country and what business endeavors a reservation community will support.

—Robert J. Miller, “American Indian Entrepreneurs”

It is clear from the historical records that American Indians have succeeded on every economic stratum from extensive trade routes to agriculture to business ownership, and yet the specter of the financially incapable American Indian still casts a shadow over Native Nations. The United States has undertaken massive acts of economic violence and economic hegemony directed at Native Nations; when the disastrous effects of these efforts were realized, the U.S. government (victim-)blamed American Indians for being financially “incompetent” and continues to do so today, all while severely underfunding programs that are owed by treaties and compacts to Native Nations, as in the case of health care (see graph 2).110 Research on American Indian citizen entrepreneurship is critical not only because we have so little collective data regarding American Indian small-business owners but also because the collective actions of these individuals help fight this false portrayal of incompetency while also addressing pragmatic issues, such as Dean Howard Smith’s “pernicious triad”: brain drain, dropouts, and joblessness.111 In doing so, small businesses support a stable and sustainable economy—a pillar of nation-building—in both measurable and indirect ways.

Along with the diversity and subsequent protection from a range of negative shocks provided by the small-business sector, their nongovernmental ownership status has advantages compared to Native Nation–owned enterprises, including a nimbleness in their ability to restructure and adapt to a variety of changing circumstances, a process that can be time-consuming when a business is owned by a government.112 In addition, small businesses ease the managerial burden on Native Nation governments, which would otherwise need to create more tribally owned enterprises, hire non-Native contractors, or give incentives to non-Native companies (seen regularly in the casino industry) to support their citizens with job opportunities and services—the latter two of which drain money from the reservation economy.

These general small-business impacts can be broken down into measurable components. Stephen Cornell, Miriam Jorgensen, Ian Wilson Record, and Joan Timeche give eleven impacts that American Indian citizen entrepreneurship has on Native Nations: the multiplier effect, building of community wealth, job creation, increase in the tax base, talent retention, psychological signals to citizens, increased quality of life, support of the Native Nation community, economic diversification, broadening of government-development efforts, and contribution to Native Nation sovereignty.113 But how do these issues play out on the ground in an economy that was previously based solely on the viability of these small businesses but that has since changed its economic focus to another income stream (gaming)? In evaluating this, three categorical impacts emerge: economic, community, and sovereignty.

Economic Impacts

In 1998, small businesses in rural America accounted for 90 percent (1.2 million) of all businesses and employed nearly two-thirds of all rural workers.114 Of particular interest to the EBCI, these small businesses had the strongest showing in service industries, including retail,

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