citizen entrepreneurs
“I want to develop my breakfast-burrito business into a restaurant,” said Lisa Lengkeek, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and 2013 winner of the South Dakota Indian Business Alliance contest for best business plan of the year. “I make the burritos at home and sell them at a stand. I have a...
At 18, Clyde Campbell worked on the engine crew for the U.S. Forest Service and later, the Hot Shot crew in Payson, Ariz., fighting fires. Though the work was dangerous, difficult and demanding at times, Campbell said he loved every minute of it. “It was fun building trails and working out in the...
This lecture is part of a course Stephen Cornell is teaching in Simon Fraser University's Executive MBA in Aboriginal Business and Leadership program. A panel of three joined Dr. Cornell in a discussion about the building of First Nation economies and the role citizen entrepreneurship can play in...
The Petersons are part of a long tradition of commercial fishing among Lake Superior tribes. Avid fishermen for subsistence prior to European settlement, the Lake Superior Chippewa quickly found Gichigami’s (Ojibwe word for Lake Superior) fish to be a valued trade item once explorers penetrated to...
Jobs, jobs, jobs. They’re on everyone’s mind these days, and Creator knows our reservations are in dire need of jobs. While America has experienced a lingering unemployment rate around the 9th percentile for the past couple of years, our reservations have been enduring unemployment rates much...
Sister Sky CEO and Principal Partner Monica Simeon provides an overview of Sister Sky, a business Simeon co-founded with her sister Marina Turning Robe on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Simeon also explains how Sister Sky is working to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit among her nation's youth.
This edition of Native Report profiles Sister Sky, an innovative Native American company that is really owned by two sisters. (Segment placement: 8:33-15:40)
There are thousands of Aboriginal organizations in Canada. They are owned, managed and staffed, wholly or in part, by First Nation (status and non-status Indian), Inuit, and Métis men, women, and youth. They exist in every region in the country where they perform profit, not-for-profit, co-...
The following feature, a special to Community Dividend, is the condensed version of a speech Professor Cornell delivered at the Montana Indian Business Conference in Great Falls, Montana, on February 2, 2006. The conference, which was cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, focused...
Native Entrepreneurship in South Dakota: a Deeper Look is designed to raise the profile of Native entrepreneurship in South Dakota and offer lessons for policymakers, foundations, tribes, and non-profits in developing effective policies and strategies. The research identified the following key...
