Since forced assimilation, when tribes’ populations, cultures, religions, languages, and economies were destroyed, and since tribes were reassigned from their native regions to unknown lands, Native people have consistently suffered economic deprivation (Harvard Project, 112). This led to many decades of bad health, bad education, and bad (or little) self-governance, and worse still, tribes’ fight for survival kept them dependent on the very federal government that annihilated their thousands-years’ old ways of living (Harvard Project, 113).
Treaties between the federal government and tribes were signed until 1871, and many were compromised or failed. Federal programs, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1824) and the Indian Reorganization Act (1934), were created to manage tribes. Of all race populations in the United States, Native people struggled the most with poverty and unemployment, and federal programs brought only limited and short-lived spurts of economic growth. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the federal government’s strategy for developing Native nations was focused on project-based job creation. When federal dollars were available to support a particular project, that tribe would experience a bloated economy, and when those dollars dried up, the economy would turn bankrupt (Harvard Project, 113), and it was always the tribes that were hurt when a program failed — not the government behind the program. In short, the federal government’s one-size-fits-all plan repeatedly failed because it was not tailored to individual tribes (Harvard Project, 126).
But some tribes were able to build off whatever success they earned from working with federal programs, and since the late 1980s, more tribes have shifted their focus to good self-governance, investments and savings, and wealth creation — a multifaceted approach, called Nation building, that works (Harvard Project, 114).
The crux of Nation building is sovereignty, and while the damage of hundreds of years of assimilation could not easily be undone, sovereignty created an open space for tribes to cull the roots of their identities (Harvard Project, 126). When tribes aggressively asserted their independence, they became free to self-govern, and when they approached their new obligations backed with the foundation of their culture, they saw success. This is called a cultural match — a match “between the structure of a society’s formal institutions of governance and economic development and its underlying norms of political power and authority (culture)” (Harvard Project, 125).
And this match is key to strategy, for without it, “the formal government of a society is likely to lack legitimacy and respect in the community is supposed to govern. It is then more likely to be an engine of conflict … ’’ (Cornell and Kalt, Reloading the Dice 15). As demonstrated later with case studies, independence, backed by cultural match, leads to effective governing and economic development, and when tribes invest in and make good of the human capital and natural resources they already have, outside investors take notice. This is both positive and negative.
The unfortunate downside to Nation building is that tribes have little control over establishing and/or maintaining their sovereignty, which is a very political but very crucial issue. In The State of the Native Nations, it is written: “Non-Indian interests have long threatened the recognition of tribes’ inherent sovereignty, and federal legislative proposals and/or the U.S. courts could simply overturn long-established legal principles and more recent polities of Indian self-rule” (Harvard Project, 135). With sovereignty under constant attack and successful economic development a relatively new aspect, many tribes still struggle with effective self-governance. Some tribes are still dependent on federal models of constitution and/or governance; some tribes are still in dependent relationships with federally organized programs.
But it is the Nation building concept that in the last half-century has dramatically slowed hundreds of years of strife. As tribes become self-governed, they gain control of their own economies and can begin to make decisions about how, when, and where to make smart investments. In turn, profits from those investments stay within the tribe, and members can decide how to reinvest that money. The result is two-fold: tribes can then act independent of outside banks who historically have held on to tribal deposits but not loaned back money for development (Harvard Project, 131), and the perception that tribes are too unstable to manage their own finances gets crushed (Cornell and Kalt, Reloading the Dice 9, 14). It’s when said perception gets debunked that outside investors can feel secure in working with tribes and/or bringing their developments to Native lands, and in cycle, their investments feed tribes’ continued success.
How tribes are perceived is important because so much outside attention is paid when Native people stand up for their independence. But the attention does not always carry negative consequences. In fact, a benefit of such interest comes in the form of tourism (tribal gaming can be considered the recent main attraction of such industry). However, just by living traditionally — growing and eating traditional foods, participating in traditional customs/ceremonies, communicating in traditional ways — curious outsiders want to observe tribes, educate themselves, celebrate and/or participate in Native culture, and in turn, bring commerce to tribes. Perhaps outsiders’ interest in cultural immersion is a sign of their understanding for our legitimate and constant fight for sovereignty.
Consider this example of a community’s involvement with a tribe: The Mississippi Choctaw, an extension of my own Choctaw (of Oklahoma) tribe, was one of the earliest tribes to enjoy modern Nation building. According to the tribe’s Economics Timeline on its Web site (www.choctaw.org), the Mississippi Choctaw opened the first tribally owned company, in 1969. The tribe’s Economic Development History Web page states that though the tribe was federally recognized in 1945, its people could not rise out of poverty until the tribe took over job creation. From that initial venture, an industrial revolution followed (1970s), and as of 1991, the tribe was generating $170 million in annual wages, providing employment to more than 12,000 (Cornell and Kalt, Where’s the Glue 4). The tribe gives hiring preference to Native people but also employs non-Native locals, and it is the second largest employer in the state. The tribe’s reinvestments fund education, law enforcement, and health services for those in and around the tribal community. Again, these achievements could not have happened if the tribe remained dependent on the federal government. Even in the September 2010 edition of Choctaw Community News, an open letter, titled “Tribal Council Takes a Stand on Sovereignty,” was published, addressed to the elected leaders of the State of Mississippi.
In the Indian Country Today article, Nation Building Lessons in the Hoopa Valley, reporter Jacob Coin summarizes the success of California’s Hoopa Valley Tribe. The Hupa, a Nation with roots at least 10,000 years old, was one of the first tribes to successfully self-govern, and it now boasts a tribal court and health, housing, and education services. Regaining control of its natural resources from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Hupa made gains capitalizing on the timber, fishing, and wildlife situated in their geographic location. They have since began operating an eco-friendly timber business, and financial success from that venture has led to other enterprises, and a Nation once struggling with an 80 percent unemployment rate was able to cut that number in half in only a few years.
In Sovereignty is an Asset, Sherry Salway Black writes about the Arizona Tohono O’odham tribe, who upon asserting its independence and securing funding from the First Nations Development Institute, was able to purchase land for farming (Harvard Project, 136). Not only did the tribe make an investment toward sustainable agriculture, it regained its Native food system, which led to another benefit — after 40 years, the tribe was now able to perform a traditional ceremony centered around farming. In time, had the Tohono O’odham tribe not established strong leadership and strategy to make said investment, the ceremony might have died out with the passing of tribal elders.
In conclusion, while there remains no one-size-fits-all approach to tribal economic development, we know what doesn’t work — when the federal government ruled over Native populations, it ignored the cultural heritage that makes up our identities. Natch, the federal government’s policies were designed with its interests in mind, not ours, and strategies it used as models for success were too broad to be applied to individual tribes. The wave of economic uprising in the late 1980s and early 1990s is the direct result of tribes asserting their independence from the federal government and shifting their focus to good self-governance, wise investments, savings and wealth creation.
Works Cited
Cornell, Stephen, and Joseph P. Kalt. “Where’s the Glue? Institutional Bases of American Indian Economic Development.” Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. John F. Kennedy School of Government. Harvard University. Februrary 1991.
- - -. “Reloading the Dice: Improving the Chances for Economic Development on American Indian Reservations.” What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions on American Indian Economic Development. American Indian Studies Center. University of California, Los Angeles.
Coin, Jacob. “Nation Building Lessons in the Hoopa Valley.” Indian Country Today. September 9, 2003.
Salway Black, Sherry. “Sovereignty is an Asset.” The State of the Native Nations: Conditions Under U.S. Policies of Self-Determination. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Oxford Press. 2008.
The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. The State of the Native Nations: Conditions Under U.S. Policies of Self-Determination. Oxford Press. 2008.
“Economics Timeline.” <http://www.choctaw.org/MBCI%20Economic%20Development/
Economics%20Timeline/Economics%20Timeline.html>
Economics%20Timeline/Economics%20Timeline.html>
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. “Tribal Council Takes a Stand on Sovereignty.” Choctaw Community News. September 2010.
