Ho-Chunk Inc.

Joan Timeche: The Practical Issues of Business Development - Some Things to Consider: Governing Body

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Native Nations Institute
Year

Native Nations Institute Executive Director Joan Timeche shares her experiences as a board member on two tribal economic development corporations, and identifies some key things that Native nations need to consider as they work to craft effective approaches to corporate governance.

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Citation

Timeche, Joan. "The Practical Issues of Business Development - Some Things to Consider: Governing Body." Building and Sustaining Tribal Enterprises seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 29, 2007. Presentation.

"I serve on two tribal corporations. One of them is a Section 17. It's the Hopi Tribe's Economic Development Corporation and we were much like Joe [Kalt] described. We went out and we bought businesses and started businesses and then had them running. They were the council-run model and then they established a new corporation, which they transferred all of those businesses over to us. So it's been a very challenging task for us. And then the other board that I sit on is with the Tohono O'odham Nation, which is just adjacent, an hour to the west of Tucson here. And they were structured very much like the Ho-Chunk, Inc. model that we put on your CD where they are a separated model. They got a large dollar, $10 million to start up their corporation, but all of their control is at the local level in their districts, political districts. So despite the fact that they have millions of acres of land for development, it's very difficult and we have yet to secure any land at all for our corporation development. So we also have many of these challenges.

I'm going to talk about these governing bodies because they are a very important key to moving forward. Basically when you look in terms of governing bodies, what we're looking at is whatever is specified in your charter. And today we heard many models of those. They're in a board of directors, but that board of directors may be the tribal council as we heard. They could be the business committee. And all of their duties and powers are defined in those charters. And you'll see some examples on that CD of the several that we gathered. They range the whole gamut from where you have minimal kinds of powers to ones where you end up having to have thresholds where at certain levels -- maybe it's purchases, maybe it's land, or whether the case may be -- it has to go back to council. So that can be all specified in there. But their whole job, this governing body -- whether it's a separate board, whether it's the business committee of the council, whatever it may be -- are responsible for the overall management of these businesses and the activities of them.

So let's talk a little bit about this board and how it should be organized. And some of the things you have to take, and these are all no-brainer stuff, I'm just going to cover examples of them. The composition: how many directors do we have? And of course you know that everyone tells you, you need to have an odd number. Five, seven, nine -- those seem to be common numbers. I sit on one that's seven but I prefer a five-member board because when you get down to the real logistics of trying to get to meetings and quorums, there's real practicality in getting, it's much easier to get three members together rather than five for a quorum.

Length, terms -- these are again all specified. One of the things that we would encourage you to do is when you're setting up these corporate terms that they not coincide with council election terms, because then it's seen that all you're doing is it's a political appointment and political elections. So you want to make sure that they're off, the terms are different than council's terms whether they're two-, three-year or four-. And just as we found in council terms, our research has indicated that the longer the terms are the more consistent stability, consistency you have and there's a more stable environment there too so we encourage you consider moving towards a longer term.

Qualifications: you heard [Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community] President [Diane] Enos talk this morning about the composition of her boards and you heard that from some of our panelists this morning about having the expertise of the people. And President Enos, she indicated that they always have somebody from the industry that sits on these boards. And this is something that we're seeing is increasingly common with some of the corporations that we work with. Where it's not just tribal citizens that are composing the board. It is combinations where you have some citizens -- and they might constitute the majority of those members or they can constitute a minority of it -- but you have to have these qualifications. In both the Hopi and the Tohono O'odham corporation charters, they require that all, well, Hopi requires that all of its members have successful business experience; that's the minimum criteria for that position. In the Tohono O'odham [charter], it specifies a certain number of people that have to be from a business field, who have had business experience or either have a profession in that area. So you can set up those criteria to meet the needs that you might have.

And again, back to this, I started talking about this, about the independent members. On the Tohono O'odham Nation for example, they have a seven-member board. Five of those members have to be citizens of that nation and they have two that can be non-tribal citizen members. I happen to be in one of those seats that is a non-tribal member sitting on that board. And one of the things that I have been able to find, just from my own personal experience, has been that I can say a lot of things that perhaps they can't say because I'm looking at them from the outside in. Sometimes because they know each other politically, it's a little bit more difficult for them to be realistic and to say what they might be thinking, but I can say those kinds of things from the outside. So that's one of the benefits to it. Sometimes they don't always like me saying what I do say, but I try to say it in a way that benefits the corporation overall.

The other question that also gets raised all the time is, ‘Can employees be eligible for these board seats?' And I'm talking about tribal government employees. Should they be eligible or not? This is a decision that you will end up having to make. Can an elected official be on this board? Some tribes will define elected official very broadly so that, I even know of one tribe where even if you sit on the school board, the public school board where you've been elected to a seat, you're defined as a public official so you cannot be a member on that board. So those are all considerations you have to take into place.

Then comes the big question -- council members. Can a council member sit on the board or not? When you open up Ho-Chunk, Inc.'s charter, you're going to find that it states that two members of their board should be from the governing body, the tribal council. There's pros and cons to it. We can argue about this all day but basically, I believe, I think it was [Meadow Lake Tribal Council] Chief [Helen] Ben who mentioned earlier about the competing interest that you have. If the chief is sitting on the board, are they wearing their chief hat? Are they wearing their employee hat? Or are they wearing their citizen hat? Are they wearing another hat of some sort? And it gets... there's a real fine line there, so it gets really difficult. But basically we found that it's just really difficult to keep those political considerations out of any kind of enterprise decision.

The other considerations that you need to make sure you have are sections that define how individual board members can be removed. Is this something that, do they serve at the pleasure of the council? Does the chief executive, the chairman, the president, the chief have the authority to remove these individuals? What is the process for removing them? Because this becomes very, a big issue as well as you move forward. Resignations, how do you fill vacancies? Does it have to go back to the council? Can the board itself then be able to fill these slots in the interim until the next council, maybe perhaps until the term expires? These are all things that need to be spelled out in procedures to move forward here.

Vacancies: one of the things that can be done is sometimes vacancies can be that blessing in disguise because it allows the board to take a look at themselves and determine, ‘Okay, who's sitting on our board? What skills, what talents, what areas are represented? Maybe we need to have...' I'll just take Hopi's development corporation. We have two vacancies. One of our vacancies was a person who knew the hotel and restaurant industries. Well, we have two hotels and two restaurants to run. Now we're lacking that kind of knowledge base on our board, and for us it's critical to find someone in there. We have three huge ranches. We don't have anybody with a ranching background. So for us that kind of a person is critical for us to find to fill that kind of a seat because the rest of us may know business in general because three of us have MBAs, but we know business concepts in general but we don't know the industry specifically.

So those are things that you can take a look at and you'll see some of the ideas up there that have worked for other entities. They're all ones that you can take a look at. The following slide is just basically a matrix that you can utilize to do this analysis of what is your board [consist of]? Each individual member: now this is all...one of the things I always encourage people to do is each individual member of the board fill this out for themselves and how they view each other and then hopefully the relationships within the board is one where they can be open and frank and honest with each other and that they don't take any of these -- if there was a negative answer on there -- that they would not take it personally because it's all being done in a constructive manner to be able to improve the board.

In terms of who selects or appoints the board, the shareholder has generally all of those responsibilities. I've seen... I don't know of any right off the top of my head where it's delegated to another entity. And the shareholder in many cases is the governing body of the nation who is the tribal council in many options. And sometimes the shareholder may decide, 'Okay, we're going to start on this new enterprise and we're going to appoint you, you and you to be on this board.' It can be done and I've seen it done that way. Or they can say, 'We're going to go through a formal nomination process,' and they advertise, they put it out and so on. And there's processes to follow, which I'll cover in the next slide. Or there can be an application process where it's much like a job. Whatever the case may be, you're going to want to make sure that you do have the information that you need on each of these potential board members because you're entrusting them with major responsibilities and sometimes just like a council they are making multi-million dollar decisions, the kinds of decisions that end up having to have long-term impact on not just the nation but its future as a whole. So these are very important.

The next slide just gives you some examples, and some of the ones that are real common or what I call standard. Most people will advertise, they ask for a letter of interest and a resume. Sometimes they'll do a reference chart, sometimes they won't. Hopi, look at Hopi's example here. This is what's happening now, but when we got acquainted we were under that first one, the first initial board of directors, we were just asked to submit a letter of interest and nobody even interviewed us and it wasn't until quite some time afterward that we were required to undergo an extensive background check. I think that background checks are going to be very critical, because again financial institutions are going to look at the composition of the board, can these people make sound decisions, these people have been running businesses but they've bankrupted each time, these are all very important kinds of things to take a look at. The Tohono O'odham Nation probably has one of the most comprehensive processes for recruiting or filling these four vacancies and I included a sample of their last announcement on that CD. I had to go through three interviews, two of them at the legislative committee level, and I first saw my first background check. I couldn't believe how extensive it was. It was just totally unbelievable. I passed. I had to go to a formal interview for the council. It was very much like a job. I was basically applying for the job of being on this board. I was asked business questions. Do I know what a business plan consists of? It was very much like a job and they screened them very well and I thought that that was one of the things that has helped me contribute to make the board much more powerful and helping us to be on the same page as we move forward in making some of these decisions.

Just a couple of other slides -- that you're making sure that you have these people and sometimes you can get these people to join your board: the banker, maybe a professor, you think of marketing people, maybe a business person, somebody out in the community who has been working, has been a friend of the tribe for years, someone like that, those are all valuable assets for you. And just some last suggestions, that you want to make sure that your enterprise board has this clear definition of its role in relationship to the council. You heard that over and over again from all of these enterprises that spoke this morning. And that also needs to go down to the CEO level as well and does it schedule reports to council. You heard this over and over again, communication, communication, communication, not just with the shareholder but with the citizens of the nation, because they're the ones as we've heard that are going to have those questions about 'where is all of that money going that you guys are earning? You guys just go and travel and do whatever,' and they're the ones that need to know what's being done and it needs to be stated to them very simply. These are all...Hopi's coming up to their first shareholder meeting next...the fifth of April, so it's going to be an historic moment for us because it's the first time that the Hopi people have ever heard about all of its five enterprises that have been existence for years, so this is going to be very historic.

Have conflict of interest rules spelled out and one of the things that's very common is to have members, board members sign a code of ethics or a code of standard that they would agree as being on the board. Have clear compensation rules, again because this is another big area that often gets raised over and over and over again. And then of course making sure that the board's chair, because they're going to be the ones out being the front face for you, and your CEO is going to be insulated from the council by the board. You have to make sure you act as one as you move forward."

Joseph P. Kalt: The Practical Issues of Business Development - Some Things to Consider: Dealing with Growth

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Native Nations Institute
Year

Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development Co-Director Joseph P. Kalt offers some points that Native nations should consider as they work to manage the growth of their nation-owned enterprises.

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Citation

Kalt, Joseph P. "The Practical Issues of Business Development - Some Things to Consider: Dealing with Growth." Building and Sustaining Tribal Enterprises seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 29, 2007. Presentation.

"Ian [Record] asked me to talk about how to handle growth and manage growth. And I thought, 'What a cool question?' Actually sit at a conference on economic development in Indian Country and the problem now is growth. How do you handle the problem that everyone's growing so fast? It's a wonderful problem to have. And it's a sign of the times that tribes are now facing the reality of dealing with the fact that their enterprises are stable and sustained and they are growing and so forth. I tried to think about what I see out on the ground in terms of dealing with growth and let me phrase it this way. I think the growth that's being experienced,  as tribes succeed in sustaining enterprises and succeed in building the environment for their own members and their own businesses -- in other words, both private and tribally-owned enterprises -- much of what is going on, and when I see it on the ground, it's like being forced through a transition. There's a little hole and a big something being forced through it and what are the transitions? Many of the transitions of growth that tribes experience in their enterprises is those enterprises really get going are really the transition issues for any business that grows rapidly. How do you keep your management up to speed, how do you keep the enthusiasm among the employees, how do you keep everybody on the same team? And so forth. But let me talk about what I see that seems sort of, if you will, new and special in Indian Country. And these are transitions that I see tribes struggling with and getting, most of them are getting through.

The first is learning what it means to do capital budgeting. For many, many tribes as tribal enterprises get going; they've started with sort of a hope. Wouldn't it be cool if this business actually survived? But the source of survival, in fact as my Hopi friend has taught me, this year's profits are next year's seed corn and the notion of doing capital budgeting for a business as opposed to a tribal program is a new arena for many tribal, the shareholders, the tribal councils, for example. It's a new arena. What does it mean to do capital budgeting? And here, I won't go into detail, but it is developing some of the things that Joan [Timeche] touched on, expecting the board to come in every October 1st or whatever date you want to pick. Here is my capital budgeting plan for the next year or the next three years. 'I need your approval and after I get your approval, you're not going to pull it back for political reasons,' and so forth. So there's a whole transition that goes on as you get particularly tribal leaders to understand that capital budgeting for an enterprise is different than just budgeting for a program. And there's the sense of course in that process in which the notion of the retention or reinvestment of capital becomes a critical aspect. Many tribal governments have run off the tribal programs where the program never makes any money, so there's never any of its own capital to reinvest in next year. But if you have a sustained enterprise, hopefully a substantial portion of the funds that enterprise has generated can in fact serve as the seed corn for going forward in the reinvestment in buying next year's round of equipment or hire the next group of laborers that you need to hire. So this transition to a notion of capital budgeting as opposed to program budgeting is a critical change that I see tribes going through.

Next I wrote down from attorneys to professional management. Many of you are probably attorneys and at least the responsible ones that I meet confess that 'we know we're in trouble when I, the attorney, am running the enterprises.' I see many, many tribes where the attorneys are, some of them don't want to give up the power, but the smart ones say, 'Thank god, we now have professional business managers,' who after their name have words like Joan's MBA as opposed to JD. It's not that attorneys are evil in the world. In fact, at the launching stages, bring an attorney with you. But that transition and getting used to this business enterprise is something we've got to take seriously. It's not just a set of legal fights, but real serious management.

Next in the transition is a transition around the issue of salaries. We deal a lot with former Harvard student Lance Morgan, CEO of Ho-Chunk Industries, which has gotten so famous for its business success. He was lecturing to my class recently and he was telling the story of salaries. When Ho Chunk, Inc. started to take off, they adopted as a board resolution of Ho-Chunk Inc. that there would be no more than a factor of three in their salaries meaning the highest-paid person wouldn't be paid more than three times the lowest-paid person. And what he said is we had to move, now I believe they're at 12-to-1, and there's a tension there and it's a real tension actually for every society. You sort of feel like, gosh, these U.S. CEOs that are making a billion dollars a year doesn't feel right. Tribes struggle with the same thing, and there's a tension there. There's just a balance point that each culture and each society has to find. Once you're running Ho-Chunk Industries from $150 million worth of private businesses essentially, they need very serious managers if they're going to be competitive in the world, both their tribal and non-members. It turns out that it's just reality that that CEO or that senior VP is going to make more money than the person who's restocking the soda machines in the hallways. And it's a tension you wish didn't exist in the world, but it's a reality that many tribes are having to deal with. I found it clever that the way Ho-Chunk handled it wasn't ad hoc. The next time we have to hire a good MBA she comes in and wants 15...they actually tried to set up policies, and they're aware that they have to modify them over time, but at least it made them focus on it as a conscious decision, so that it didn't just become ad hoc, that we're going to pay Joan 15 times more than we pay someone else. So I think the issue on salaries is important. It's just a sign of the times that these businesses are getting more successful, more professional management.

Two more categories real quickly of this transition: a very interesting one and I've seen this now occur at three or four different tribal enterprises that I've been familiar with, working with, and that's the rise of racism. This is an uncomfortable issue. Increasingly, as the tribes have gotten more powerful and successful, a number of these CEOs, tribal members have come and told me privately, 'Joe, we've got a problem with racism.' It's racism of our own tribal members against the non-Indians, and I know at least two tribal corporations that have had to have the kind of retreat and get our heads around this and start talking about the reality that we all need to be able to work together and so forth and so on. And so it's a very interesting time. It's really a sign of this increasing success and sustained professionalism, that you now have these kinds of issues arising. But it's something... and that's only one tip of a very large iceberg, because we're all aware of the racism that historically has gone the other direction. You hire the white senior manager and he doesn't trust the young Indian intern that he's supposed to be training to take his job. We know those stories, but it is a sign that one of the transitions that tribes have to be serious now that they're managing real enterprises. They've got to keep everybody happy and many of them are so large now, and many tribes as you know, all the tribal members have jobs. You have to go outside and hire non-Indians.

Two more transitions: one is the transition -- and Diane Enos said it beautifully today -- the transition to the reality that you're going to have to turn these enterprises loose to manage to one target, which is profits. It's not that profits are the end. My colleague Steve Cornell says a great line. The goal here of economic development really isn't to sort of make everybody filthy rich and drive around in Mercedes. It's actually freedom. It's to generate the revenue so the tribe as an entity has the ability to make its own decisions. We can rebuild that sewer system and not wait for the federal dollars. We can rebuild that high school tutoring system and not wait for the federal dollars. And the way you do it in a very competitive world out there is you manage for profit. That's a tough thing of course because it's very natural to say, 'But wait a minute, why do we have to manage for profit? We have different values.' But more and more tribes are saying to us, 'It's because we have those values, we need this money to get the freedom to pursue our own objectives in this society.'

Last transition and a fascinating one to me: We run -- and Mike Taylor touched on -- as you know, some of you may know we run this program called Honoring Nations recognizing best practices among tribal governments. And I was out this summer at Citizen Potawatomi in Oklahoma. And they're this great success story. In 1976, they had 2.5 acres and $550 and now they basically own Shawnee, Oklahoma. And there's no question about their sovereignty; they run everything. All Potawatomis who want a job have a job. They're hiring thousands of black and white workers from Oklahoma in both private enterprises, tribal enterprises, tribal government. And we were working there with the head of their community development corporation, a very nice blonde, white woman, obviously not Potawatomi. And I listened to her talk and the whole time I'm talking, she's talking about 'us,' and what you're watching is as tribes sustain not only the economic development, the economic development that allows them to rebuild the ball fields, to rebuild the sewer system, to rebuild the schools, you start to change the definition of citizens. And it's an interesting transition that, I see it at Mississippi Choctaw as well, everybody at Mississippi Choctaw and they're not even aware of, the non-Indians are running around with this button that says 'Mississippi Choctaw, Sovereign and Proud of It,' and they're not even aware what they're doing. It's just like, oh, yeah. And if they go to a high school basketball game and it's Mississippi Choctaw High School versus Jackson, Mississippi, all the non-Indians go sit on the Choctaw side and it's because you're watching us as humans redefine what team we're on. And for all of us, no matter what race or ethnicity we're from, somewhere in our histories we sort of got an identity as Hopi or American or Navajo or Apache, whatever it is. And what's interesting, with the growth in Indian Country and the strength is starting to redefine the word 'we,' and I know of a couple tribes now who are beginning to start to think about the reality, problem of growth, we may have to start giving people who are not Indian certain levels of citizenship rights partly because we're a good team, our schools are better than the Shawnee, Oklahoma schools, and now the non-Indian kids of our non-Indian employees want to go to our school instead of the State of Oklahoma school. And so it's a very interesting transition that's tough -- I'm not being a Pollyanna here -- but it's one of the signs of growth that like other successful nations in the world Indian nations are starting to have immigrants, immigrants who want certain rights to citizenship. And it's a sign of success, it's a healthy sign of success that you're building places where people can and want to live." 

Native Nation Building TV: "Building and Sustaining Tribal Enterprises"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Guests Lance Morgan and Kenneth Grant explore corporate governance among Native nations, in particular the added challenge they face in turning a profit as well as governing effectively. It focuses on how tribes establish a regulatory and oversight environment that allows nation-owned enterprises to flourish, particularly the separation of day-to-day business operations from politics.

Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Building and Sustaining Tribal Enterprises" (Episode 4). Native Nation Building television/radio series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy and the UA Channel, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2006. Television program.

Mark St. Pierre: "Mark St. Pierre. Hello, friends. I'm your host, Mark St. Pierre and welcome to Native Nation Building. Contemporary Native Nations face many challenges including building effective governments, developing strong economies that fit their culture and circumstances, solving difficult social problems and balancing cultural integrity in change. Native Nation Building explores these often complex challenges in the ways Native Nations are working to overcome them as they seek to make community and economic development a reality. Don't miss Native Nation Building next."

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[music]

Mark St. Pierre: "Today's show looks at enterprises owned by Native nations, how those enterprises are run, why many such enterprises fail, and what Native nation governments and elected officials can do to help ensure their success. With me today to discuss why some Native nation enterprises succeed and others fail are Lance Morgan and Kenneth Grant. Lance Morgan, a citizen of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, is the Chief Executive Officer of Ho-Chunk, Inc., the Winnebago Tribe's award-winning economic development corporation. Kenneth Grant is a research fellow with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and a senior policy scholar at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. I'd like to thank both of you gentlemen for being with us today. Kenny, I'll start with you. Give us a definition of tribal enterprise."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "I think most people think of a tribal enterprise as a company that's owned by the government, and that's not quite correct. It's a company, a business unit, that's owned by every single tribal member by virtue of the fact that they're a citizen of the tribe, and these business units typically have as their objective to earn financial returns and other social objectives that accrue to the entire community, so that all the citizens are owners and share in the benefits. So that's what I think of when we talk about a tribal enterprise."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Lance, you've developed one of the best models for tribal enterprise. What are some of the toughest challenges that tribes have to overcome?"

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "Well, you have to think about it terms of the situation that we have to function in, and we have a political system we didn't design, we have a system that doesn't allow capital to flow to reservations very easily, you have a poor educational system that doesn't necessarily deal with business development, you don't have a history of entrepreneurial and business success. And all of these things combine to create probably the toughest business environment in the United States."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Is one of the problems that you encounter, and this is for either one of you, separating business from tribal politics?"

Kenneth Grant: background:white">"There's a real difficulty in separating the roles. With government-owned or tribally-owned enterprises, people are wearing multiple hats at the same time, and so you're a citizen of the tribe and yet you're also a part owner of the enterprise. A council member has governing responsibilities, is also an owner, is also a citizen. That collapsing of the distance between government and business often creates a lot of role confusion for tribes that is difficult to overcome."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "I once went to a conference and gave a speech there, and before I spoke somebody said, 'There are 30 government entities to help you tribes get into business.' And it occurred to me that they're helping us set up these government-led economic models, kind of the communism or socialism things that we had spent billions of dollars or trillions of dollars probably in 30 years fighting it 'cause it's inherently evil. And that's the system they had in mind for us. And I'm not so sure, I'm not going to make a comment on...at the end of the speech I said, 'I think that...I can't believe Winnebago is Karl Marx's last hope.' But I think that you have to understand the situation we're in. If we need to develop businesses, the government is really the entity with the only access to capital to do that, and so you almost have to get into this, and if you don't then you have this kind of capital-starved entrepreneur sector you've got to hope for the best with. But if you don't have that tradition or those capabilities, the government really is the only answer, so if you're going to set it up, you have to figure out a way to set it up that takes away some of the negatives of having a political entity run the business and I think that's really the challenge. You really...the tribe doesn't have a choice."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "Right, exactly. And a lot of people say, 'Oh, it's separating politics from business and the fact is you can't separate the two. It's a question of how they meet and making that relationship as productive as possible."

Lance Morgan: background:white">"We're owned by government entities, so really politics plays into the decision-making to some extent. It always will. But you still have to figure out a way to balance those issues."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Those of us that have been around for awhile remember a lot of failed EDA [Economic Development Administration] attempts to create tribal enterprises. Is the climate different today than it was in the past?"

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "I think that there's a lot more success out in Indian Country in running tribal enterprises. So you can look from the Citizen Potawatami Nation to Mississippi Choctaw -- who have a plethora of successful tribally-owned enterprises -- to individual instances, whether it's Yukaana Development [Corporation] up in Alaska. You can look across the tribes, north to south, east to west, and there are examples of success, and I think Lance can speak to this better than I can, but they are becoming much more sophisticated in understanding sort of what the dangers are and how to promote business and run these operations."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "You referred to kind of the old grant-based economic development model, and I think that that's still an important part of it, but we need to...we've transitioned I think, or the challenge of transition is away, from the grant as our only development tool. What we did is we ran kicking and screaming from anything to do with the government for the first seven or eight years we were in business. And then it occurred to us when we wanted more capital that, hey, maybe we should go back and dust off the old grant model, and we've been able to raise grant money, but it's a supplement to what we're trying to do and it gives us some of the startup capital we need and we're not dependent upon it. And I think it's still a tool that you need to [use] but -- as you grow in sophistication -- that it really factors into your decision-making, it doesn't drive it."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Kenny, you've worked with a lot of tribes. Why do you think so many enterprises have failed?"

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "I think part of it is there are issues that are particular to each tribe. Let me put it this way. I think the most insidious problem that I've seen -- working with tribes and trying to run tribal enterprises -- is when the tribe and the citizens think it's an operational problem, when really it's an institutional problem. So I'll give you a quick example of working with one tribe where they had a plethora, I mean just a whole bunch of human capital, great natural resources, access to financial capital. These were very, very well-educated people, and yet the tribal enterprises kept falling. If you talk to the tribal citizens they'd say, 'Well, we just haven't been as civil as we used to be, or people aren't following the procedures book -- and there's this big procedures book.' Or the opposition would say, 'If I were in power all of this problem would go away.' In fact, what you saw is that there were really big disputes that had never been resolved because they had no tribal court system and these disputes were creating distrust and they would just bring an operation to a standstill. A council meeting would just come to an end. And so it wasn't really about civility, it was really about the foundation and the institutions. And that's the toughest problem is when you think it's just our accounting isn't in order, when in fact it's really about how the institutions are operating."

Lance Morgan: background:white">"Yeah, I'd like to add to that a little bit. I think that people tend to simplify the problems, and they focus on whatever bad thing happened at that time and they try to allocate blame, and some people try to do that for their own political gain and all these kinds of things, so you have a tough kind of local political environment. But if the people would take the time to say, 'All right, if we're having this problem over and over again, there's probably some reason for it.' And I always recommend, when tribes come to visit us, that they look at their government structure, they look at their corporate structure, and they figure out in advance what their challenges are going to be and try to plan for them in advance. If they do that, then their chances of success in avoiding these kinds of constant cycles of problems are much higher."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "To follow up, Lance, then what are some of the things that Native Nations need to look at to build success?"

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "Ho-Chunk, Inc. is really the second attempt. Winnebago Industries was our first attempt in the 1980s, and that pre-dated me a little bit, but when we got there and we decided that we wanted to set up a new corporation, we sat down and we said, 'What are all the reasons we failed before?' 'Cause we have a long history of failure in some of these businesses, and we listed them out and we tried to design a system that would allow us to actually deal with some of those things right up front, and I think that's probably a pretty important step."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "That statement reminded me of a speech that Chairman [John "Rocky"] Barrett gave at Native Nations Institute maybe four or five years ago now, and he was talking about his economic development plan. He's chair of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and he said, 'My constitution is my economic development plan,' meaning, 'I wanted to get the institutions right, I wanted to sort of be able to lay the foundation. That was my goa. Then let the economic activity flourish.'

Lance Morgan: background:white"> 'It's not even a difficult thing to really figure out how to address [that], because you can almost go to any -- ask a tribal leader and economic development person, 'What are your problems?' And they can list them out in detail, and they're almost the same as everybody. But why not take a little bit extra time and put your institutions in place to deal with some of those problems right up front?"

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "The one place I might have a little disagreement is the problems are often known, but when you're talking about changing systems, that can be a very difficult process, because people have gotten used to the system that they have, they know how it operates, and so trying to transform those institutions can be a real challenge."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "Oh, it's actually...it can actually not just be a challenge, it can be dangerous because I think you can do things -- I've seen some tribes do some things that are actually counterproductive, and they do it in the name of maybe some kind of ode to a traditional practice in the past, but it really doesn't make sense in a modern contex. And I've seen some tribes do some things, set up governmental structures that really sounded good and sounded like a great idea but in practice have been a real impediment towards their growth and development."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "And I think it's interesting that the first part of this conversation has really focused more on foundational issues about institutions -- and we can get into the operational issues of the tribal enterprise -- but clearly you can see where Lance and I are going about getting the environment right in which the enterprise can then begin to perform."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Well, that kind of leads to a logical question, I think, and that is that Lance listed at the beginning some of the obstacles that are very real that every tribe face, especially the larger tribes, larger populations. What are some of the factors that tribes can control?"

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "I sort of come at it from the economics and I look and I say, 'Okay, there's the market out there and there's much that the tribal enterprise can't control. They have to go out and compete against other companies that are providing the same services and then there's policy over here and tribal policy, maybe they've got some say in there but there's not too much control and then there's federal policy.' So I look at it from the economics and say, 'What they really can control is their operations. Are their operations running efficiently, the accounting and the reporting, the board structure?' That's really what they have within their own control."

Lance Morgan: background:white">"I think that's right, but I think what we've done is we've had a tendency to look for some advantage. I always joke that...all of a sudden we're all business experts because of gaming, but I think that it doesn't take a huge sophistication I think to make a lot of money in gaming if you're right next to a big city and you have a monopoly. But what we've had to do is find niches where we have not as huge an advantage as gaming but some advantage over our competition, and there's huge advantages being a tribe. You have your own governmental jurisdiction, you can make your own rules, you can get preferential treatment on some contracts, maybe you can get some start-up capital from various places. So we've tried to focus on areas where if we make a mistake learning, that it's not going to kill us, and that if we get our act together, we should be able to long term have a viable entity because we have some inherent niche or some inherent kind of advantage in that market."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "Mark, I'll just follow up. That's a great point and that's a lesson that's seen over and over and over again, is exploiting these small niches where there's a comparative advantage for the tribe and then growing that. You can see it in Yukaana Development Corporation, which is an environmental remediation group up in Galena, Alaska. Very focused on a few issues, they basically have their teams all over Alaska now. The Cherokee Tribal Sanitation Program run by the Eastern Band [of Cherokee], servicing first their own community, then got so good at it went out and signed contracts with neighboring jurisdictions so that they provide waste facilities, a transfer station for their neighboring communities, and they sort of grow off this seemingly little niche but they learn the game and then grow."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "I don't think it's a coincidence that tribes everywhere are involved in gaming, are involved in gasoline- or tobacco-type issues. Those are kind of the stereotype economic development issues. And what those really are, if you think about them, they're not inherent Indian businesses. What they really are are businesses that you can get into and take advantage of having a jurisdiction or a different tax base or making a decision on gaming, for example, that another place doesn't. And so I think the challenge is -- or I recognize that these are jurisdictional advantages and we're going to develop our businesses. The challenge for us has been, all right, these businesses are controversial, they create clashes with the state, they create competitive threats that people don't like, and our challenge has been to figure out how we take the money we've made and move to the second stage. How do we take that money and get into home manufacturing, get into construction, get into government contracting, those kinds of things, things that take full advantage of being a tribe but aren't nearly as controversial and aren't a stereotyped business. I think then that's been the challenge for us."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "This is for Lance, but Kenny if you want to jump in as well. A lot of folks, tribal people are very concerned about the job issues and the whole issue of jobs versus profits and the social impact of tribal enterprises and I'd like you to talk about that for a minute."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "When we started our company, we created two missions. We have two primary goals, and one is to create economic self-sufficiency and the other one is to create job opportunities. I think that we've had a lot...before we started we had a long history of kind of having businesses there and we kept them open even if they weren't necessarily profitable because of the jobs issue, and I always kind of thought that was kind of a bit of a cop-out for poor management or poor decision-making or poor governmental structure. I think that if you don't have the profits, you're not really going to have the jobs for a long-term, sustainable period of time, and so I think you really need to focus on developing a successful business. If you do that, the jobs will follow. If we would have, for example, made the decision early on to keep a business that was failing open, that capital would have...we would have had to supplement that business over a period of years and it would have prevented us from making other decisions further on that would have been very helpful for us. And so by focusing on the real economic development issues, we now have more jobs than working-age people in our community. So I think if you focus on success everything else will follow."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Kenny, would you like to respond?"

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "I agree. I think in some sense it's a false dichotomy, but I think Lance is absolutely right that you have to...if the goal is sustainable, ongoing economic activity, the tribal enterprise is going to be here for today, tomorrow, five years, then the focus has to be on profit and then the industry that you go into, the service you provide, or the product that you make will then dictate the number of jobs that are allowed, 'cause you can't force 20 jobs into a position where the market really only allows one job, but if you want that job to sustain itself, then it has to be the focus on profits."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "I think the key decision upfront is does your tribe need the jobs? Some tribes necessarily don't. If you do need the jobs, then you have to go into businesses that are labor intensive and then try to be successful there. So the real decision is up front in what type of industries do you want to go after or try to develop."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "I would think, too, that the grant mentality of the two- or three-year jobs based on a grant cycle versus long-term jobs created by real enterprise and real profits are kind of an adjustment that tribal citizens have to make, especially for those tribes that have been invested in that grant economy."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "I would agree. I think a lot of times what you're doing is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Those grants are coming from Washington. So you know the old EDA hotels. It just was the wrong enterprise, and that's not what should have been going, but the money was there, and so there's this sort of predilection to want to go get that money and do that enterprise even though the tribe may not have a regulatory advantage, it may not have a business or a competitive advantage, and they fail and that sort of begins a cycle of..."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "I think if you don't have a clearly defined strategy, that you're likely to make some mistakes on the grant side of things. These grants are written to say do certain things, but we have found that if you come forward with a very well-conceived plan and they have trust that you're going to do it, that the government entities on the grant side are very flexible. If they believe in what you're trying to do, they will modify their system to help you accomplish your goal. So I think the real key is to figure out exactly what you want to do and make sure that that makes sense and get other people to buy into [it]. Then you can spin the system to help you."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "Right. But notice in that case whose leading. Here's the tribe saying this is...or the enterprise saying, 'This is where we want to go. This is our goal and are there grants out there that will fit into this process,' as opposed to, 'the grant is out there so we'll do whatever the grant says we're going to do.'"

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "Yeah, you've got to flip the equation so that you're in the power position."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Lance, kind of on that same plane though, there's one of the fears out there that as tribes thrive rather than survive that the culture is going to be eroded, that as tribes move into a more professional business model that somehow cultures or tribal cultures are going to die."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "Yeah. That's really a major challenge that especially I think young Native American professionals are facing right now. I've always said that culture is really based on a lifestyle based on how you live, and that's based on economics and I think that tribes have a tendency to stereotype themselves based on a positive image that we had of ourselves 100 years ago. But those cultural things, some of those values carry forward, but some of the things that they did were based on a different economic reality, and so I think we need to figure out a way to do Native values like taking care of your family, sharing in your community, but figure out how to be successful in a modern context. I think too often somebody will stand up in a meeting, make a speech about culture and it'll kill a project, and I don't think that that's probably the...and I think then they pat themselves on the back for being pure and then nothing happens and people still aren't able to take care of their families. I also think it's used to make young Native professionals feel bad. You question yourself all the time: Am I doing the right thing? Who am I now? And I think we need to try to embrace success and really figure out what the context of what part of our culture do we want to take forward and reapply it in a modern context. And I think that's the core challenge we're facing."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "This came up once in a classroom with Chief Phillip Martin, Mississippi Choctaw, and I will never say it as eloquently as Chief Martin said, but basically his point was, through our success we actually have citizens returning to the reservation, and so the people are coming back and now they have the language programs and all the sort of benefits that are accruing from being financially successful through their tribal enterprises. So he's sort of saying, 'How's that destroying my culture when I have all my people coming back?'"

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "Our culture 20 years ago was one of poverty and all the 'isms' you could think of, all the negativisms, alcoholism and all these kinds of things, and our culture's changed. When we first started our corporation we had this discussion, 'Do we really want to be like corporate America?' And we didn't want to. Do we really want a change? But what's really happened is, as the economy has flowered, as people's lives have gotten better, cultures take on a renaissance. Things like the alcoholism and the drug abuse and some of the social issues have begun to die down and people are much more focused on getting back in touch with who they are and taking more pride in themselves and I think that's a pretty critical...that's something I guess I didn't think through, but that's something that's definitely happened in the last 10 years in our community."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "I'm going to change direction a little bit here now, and I think we're talking about exciting things. We're talking about thriving. But in order to get that to happen, you need to create some separation between tribal politics or tribal governmental structures and business enterprises. Could you address some ideal ways where that distance can be structured?"

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "I think I will start from the global view. I don't think there's one way. I don't think that there's a silver bullet here. I think it's particular to the situation. I have seen some tribes and some tribal enterprises that basically rely on a strong CEO and a good relationship with the council. I've seen other tribal enterprises such as the Yakama Nation Land Enterprise has a board that is essentially a subcommittee of the tribal council and that works for them. In other instances, there are formal boards of directors essentially that stand between the government and the enterprise, and so they're sort of making sure the enterprise is reporting to the council and they're helping the enterprise set strategy."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "I think the key for us, the real key is -- one of the main keys I think -- is having a political system that is very helpful, it's very stable. We have nine council members and three are elected every year and usually only one or two change over so we never have this huge kind of change in at-the-top strategy level, and the new people that come in, even if they're kind of curious or suspicious about what we're doing, kind of have a time to adjust and they learn, 'Okay, this isn't so bad.' And so that gives us a stable political environment to work in. Within that we have a board of directors -- we have a tribal corporation, we have a board of directors, the council appoints the board, they passed our long-term plan and they approve our annual plan. That's really their only job. They only have three roles. The board has all the other roles and then myself as CEO makes sure the business functions. And so we have clearly defined roles and we stick to them and we occasionally have to pull out the old long-term plan from '94 and dust it off and read it in a council meeting and that's been pretty helpful for us."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "Yeah, getting people to stick to their roles is the challenge, 'cause many times I've seen boards have really just become advisory boards and the CEO is reporting to the council because over time people have moved away from the agreement that they originally set down."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "What we did is -- I mentioned earlier that we had listed all the reasons for our failure and we added an additional part to it. We took an additional step and I think that's been the key. We developed something we now call -- then it was the long-term plan -- but we're a little more sophisticated now, we call it the 'principles governing the interaction between the tribe and the corporation,' and we have this list of rules based on the reasons we failed before. For example, we failed because we had to go to the council for every dollar we got. So we said, 'All right, the tribe is going to give us 20 percent of the casino profits in an account that the board controls so we don't have to go to the council so every investment decision isn't politicized. We failed once before because the tribe would suck out all the money from the corporation just because they had needs to...social needs to spend it on.' But the tribe said, 'All right, for the first five years, you get to keep all of your money, and then now we're giving 10 percent of our profits back gradually up to 20 percent. We have a system in place. We failed because of personnel issues. We created our own personnel system. We failed 'cause of the lack of accounting systems, accounting was in the tribe's. We have our own accounting system. So we figured out up front and established all these rules, and every once in awhile we have to read these things and remind the council of it and everyone gets back onboard and we move forward."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "That leads to another logical question I guess. The Harvard Project and the Native Nations Institute research says that dispute resolution and having a good organ to do that is important."

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "Well, it gets back to the politicization that we were talking about earlier and creating the unstable environment and what the dispute resolution does is it helps hold that in check. People have a place to go to resolve the dispute and if the mechanism is seen as fair, it helps hold the politics of spoils in check. That makes it easier for the tribal enterprise to attract the human capital and the financial capital that it needs to operate successfully."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "We don't have a lot of problems on the dispute-resolution side with our individual businesses. Our primary dispute is balancing the separation with the government and the business and we really, since we're owned by them, we really have to figure out ways to get along with them. And so our disputes are played out kind of through negotiation typically, and I think that if we ever really got into a fight with our owner we would probably lose. They could pass laws, they can make motions, they can change the board, so our challenge is to educate people and to get them onboard with our long-term concepts and make them a believer in what we're trying to do."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "And that's the follow up: How do you do that? How do you educate the tribal citizens who are also the tribal politicians eventually in this process?"

Kenneth Grant: background:white"> "I think it speaks to the issue of transparency, and that doesn't mean that every decision that Lance makes is open for review or put up to a vote by the citizens, but it is keeping people aware of what the mission of the operation is, how it's performing, what its financial returns are, what its goals are, and I do think that the political leadership has a role in helping to educate the tribal citizens and the owners of the enterprise."

Lance Morgan: background:white"> "One of the things we do is we have a mechanized system for putting information out to the people and to the government. We have to provide audited financials every year and an annual report and we even had a PR campaign, kind of a sophisticated thing which really was kind of a failure I think. I think what's really helped us is really going out and directly talking to our membership. One on one we've brought in our employees, we've kind of given them a fact sheet about what we do and given them information, they go home, talk to their families and we deal with kind of the little negative issues that emerge in a small community and I think our sophisticated PR strategy and press releases and all that stuff really didn't work until we started talking to our people."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Sadly, we're running out of time, but I'd like to do one final question for both of you. This is exciting stuff. Where do you see it headed?"

Kenneth Grant: " background:white">I think there's been a tremendous change in the last 20 years, and I think more and more examples of success are breeding more and more success within Indian Country on operating tribal enterprises. I think it's one of the biggest changes we've seen in the last 20 years, and I think the trend is very, very positive."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Where is Ho-Chunk?"

Lance Morgan: "Our challenge is to continue to transition from these controversial businesses to these businesses that take advantage of being a tribe, and really make a lot of money hopefully and we can take that money and funnel it towards our community in a social kind of side of the equation. I think that what I don't want to get lost in this [is] it's not really, it's never really about the money. We're never going to be Microsoft. We're a company that is focused on making our community better, and I think the more we realize that ourselves, the better off we are. So I think the future for us, drive the business forward, be as great as we can, as competitive as we can, and figure out ways -- challenging and interesting ways -- to spread the wealth in our community so that everybody benefits from it. And I think that in the end is going to be the key to our longevity there, because that's what's going to engender I think good feelings towards the tribe."

Mark St. Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to both you guys for traveling here. I'd like to thank Lance Morgan and Kenneth Grant for appearing on today's edition of Native Nation Building, a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Native Nation Building and the issues discussed here today, please visit the Native Nations Institute website at www.nni.arizona.edu/nativetv. Thank you for joining us and please tune in for the next edition of Native Nation Building."

Ho-Chunk, Inc. CEO Receives Award from U.S. Department of Commerce Agency

Author
Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

Lance Morgan launched the Ho-Chunk, Inc. in 1994 as the economic development corporation of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Now the president and CEO is receiving the Advocate of the Year Award by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) at the end of this month. Morgan will be honored during a special ceremony at the 2014 National Minority Enterprise Development (MED) Week happening July 31 to August 1, 2014 in Washington, D.C. The Advocate of the Year Award is given annually to an organization or individual who has shown leadership and commitment in advancing the minority business community. The award pays tribute to minority entrepreneurs who have demonstrated economic impact in a global economy...

Resource Type
Citation

ICTMN Staff. "Ho-Chunk, Inc. CEO Receives Award from U.S. Department of Commerce Agency." Indian Country Today Media Network. July 22, 2014. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/ho-chunk-inc-ceo-receives-award-from-us-department-of-commerce-agency, accessed June 1, 2023)

Ho-Chunk Plans to rename Terra Centre

Author
Year

Ho-Chunk Inc. has acquired a majority stake in the Terra Centre and plans to rename it for the Winnebago Tribe's economic development division.

"We just bought the largest building in Sioux City," Ho-Chunk CEO Lance Morgan told an audience in Lincoln, Neb., on Wednesday. "Basically, that's going to be called the Ho-Chunk Centre."

"We're not even moving in," Morgan said. "We're just putting our name on the top of it because we think it's gonna be cool." Ho-Chunk is purchasing the iconic glass-clad office building at 600 Fourth St. in partnership with the Sioux Falls-based real estate and development firm Dunham Co. and other investors...

Resource Type
Citation

Dreeszen, Dave. "Ho-Chunk Plans to rename Terra Centre." Sioux City Journal. September 21, 2012. (http://siouxcityjournal.com/business/local/exclusive-ho-chunk-plans-to-r..., accessed September 21, 2012)

Ho-Chunk, Inc. has grown into global enterprise

Author
Year

The Winnebago Tribe's reservation in Northeast Nebraska is home to about 2,800 enrolled members. The tribe, a federally recognized, sovereign nation, is governed by a council of nine-elected tribal members. The tribe owns a number of enterprises, including gaming operations in Iowa and Nebraska, and Ho-Chunk Inc., an economic development corporation launched in 1994 to create jobs for tribal members and help the tribe become economically self sufficient. Governed by a separate board of directors and executive management team, led by CEO Lance Morgan, Ho-Chunk Inc. has grown into a global enterprise with $230 million in annual revenue...

Resource Type
Citation

Dreeszen, Dave. "Ho-Chunk, Inc. has grown into global enterprise." Sioux City Journal, May 31, 2012. (http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/a1/ho-chunk-inc-has-grown-into-gl..., accessed June 1, 2012)

Indian Pride: Episode 108: Economic Development

Producer
Prairie Public Broadcasting
Year

Indian Pride, an American Indian cultural magazine television series, spotlights the diverse cultures of American Indian people throughout the country. This episode of Indian Pride features Lance Morgan, President and CEO of Ho-Chunk, Inc., the economic development corporation of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, and focuses on the topic of economic development in Indian Country. (Segment Placement: 1:06-15:08)

People
Citation

"Economic Development." Indian Pride (Episode 108). Prairie Public Broadcasting. Fargo, North Dakota. 2007. Television program. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFibj75MUi0, accessed September 26, 2012).