The architecture of a sustainable American Indian economy By Paul Frits © Indian Country Today | June 02, 2005 http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=96411017
Everyone knows what the important economic question is. And that question applies to all tribes, because we - all our tribes - have experienced more or less the same history. After so many centuries of our lands and resources, our cultural norms and our original social orders and governance systems being assaulted, violated, disrespected, stereotyped, ridiculed, appropriated, misappropriated, substituted, adulterated, misrepresented, persecuted, suppressed, dominated, smothered and, in some cases, snuffed out by the dominant culture, how can Native societies reconstitute themselves to the point of forever leaving behind a dependent survival pattern? The answer may be found in another question: How can the North American tribal community develop a long-term, robust, sustainable and inclusive economy capable of achieving necessary self-government revenues, acceptable employment statistics and desirable growth rates across all (or most all) tribes, towards a collectively secure self-governance tradition and a mutually supportive economic future? This is perhaps the primary defining question that confronts our tribal leaders in rebuilding our collective community of First Nations of the Americas. We are perhaps now, finally, close to seriously addressing this challenge. After more than five centuries following initial contact with the first immigrant settlers in this hemisphere, we are perhaps poised to truly re-develop an ''international'' community of First Nations based on a positive, harmonized, collective momentum of economic initiative, rather than a merely reactive pattern of responses to successive generations of negative external pressures. Historical inter-tribal commerce It is a truism that the North American tribal community constitutes a group of societies whose collective identity is defined by so much more than being simply one member of the contemporary North American community of ''visible minorities.'' Rather, our true collective identity is as much fed by the mythic and historical value of our shared spiritual relationship with the lands of our respective ancestors as by the way we all - every last tribe, from all four directions - weaved the mystical properties of our natural environments into the belief systems and collective rituals that held our communities together, as self-governing and sovereign societies since time immemorial. And yet we may be well-advised to learn some commercial and financial practices from other minorities (visible and otherwise) that were not original inhabitants of the Americas, but who have come here and lifted the economic tide of their respective communities through their own economic behaviors. There are many such minorities whose constituent groups have offered jobs, opportunities and benefits to the surrounding community while benefiting individuals and groups within their specific minority. This has been accomplished in such ways that a greater-than-average per capita percentage of net benefits accrued within that minority in areas where the need was greatest. Such benefit-sharing has been conveyed within these minority groups through the advancement of capital on credit, investment opportunities and co-venturing opportunities, contracting opportunities and job opportunities. And such practices have been of critical importance to the expansion and diversification of economic activity within those minority groups. In this vein, it is worth noting that our collective Native identity has been defined in part by the historic patterns of commercial interaction that existed between our societies, particularly in pre- Columbian times. In that context, we are informed by oral traditions and by the record of archaeological relics that reveal there was an extensive system of interactive trade patterns extending northeast and northwest from Central America across most of North American. A similar trade pattern also extended southeast and southwest from Central America across much of South America. Returning to original economic patterns The modern return to pre-Columbian, inter-tribal economic patterns will, in part, be based on natural preferences favoring the hiring of Native peoples, and the procurement of goods and services from Native-controlled businesses. It will also, in part, be based simply on the networking of tribes and Native individuals with common investment interests, towards co-investing in specialized or general markets. It will be further based on the establishment of commercial Native enterprises, and by tribal governments and non-governmental Native individuals and groups that structure their services and products to reach out to Native markets and facilitate specialized access to goods and services to which access has previously been subject to barriers. In this way, new secondary and tertiary Native industries are more likely to emerge. Facilitating such patterns These themes were addressed to some extent at the annual convention of the National Indian Gaming Association, held in San Diego in April, and expressed principally in two proposed initiatives. The first initiative proposes to encourage the tribal government gaming sector to be active in training and hiring Native individuals, and in exercising purchasing practices which benefit Native companies and companies that have a policy of benefiting Natives through employment and/or subcontracts. The second initiative contemplates the active development of an American Indian Business Network that might facilitate positive results in the first initiative described above, and have other positive effects. The proposed NIGA initiatives echo a theme that has been the subject of initiatives pursued for some time by the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development (NCAIED). These efforts were the subject of many conference sessions and various public addresses made at the NCAIED-organized Res 2005 conference held in February in Las Vegas. In fact, NCAIED has long facilitated, through its networks and its Native business support program, access in favor of Native business (both tribal government and private sector) to U.S. government contracting preferences (under Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act), and similar access to the mainstream private sector business community (particularly public companies having ethnic diversification policies). It is clear that such continued efforts are required. The average poverty rate for members of gaming tribes is still high: 24.7 percent. The rate for non-gaming tribes is 33 percent. In view of these statistics, the desirability of encouraging and facilitating the aforementioned patterns of contemporary Native business practices is unquestionable. But even more significantly, in view of the rapid growth of the American Indian population over the next generation, these commercial patterns are desirable for the expansion and diversification of the broader Native economy. Such diversification is also particularly desirable in view of emerging challenges to any tribe's inadvisable reliance upon a single-industry economy. Adapting the ancient practices There are special reasons for, and approaches to, optimizing the implementation of such remedial collective inter-tribal practices, especially in the case of particular standard tribal government business sectors not limited to gaming - upon which some tribes have become inordinately reliant. Moreover, there are tips to avoiding undesirable complications in the implementation of such practices and efforts. These will be explored in the next installment of this column. Paul Frits is a Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. He was a member of the board of his First Nation's Business Development Corporation through most of the 1990s, and continues to be an honorary member of that corporation. Frits practiced Native law for many years and has advised many tribal administrations in their public governance matters and economic development initiatives, including casino/hospitality, financial services, energy, natural resources, services, manufacturing, telecommunications and information technology, cultural and other industries. Frits volunteers his time to research and write perspective columns on matters of interest to the broader Native community. He may be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] «¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥««¤»¥«¤»§«¤» This is ZESTEconomics. Post economics-related articles and event info to [email protected] If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTEconomics by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! 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