self-sufficiency

Good Food is Power: A collection of traditional foods stories from the Ramah Navajo Community, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Tohono O'odham Nation

Year

This report explores the traditional foods movement through the lenses of three traditional foods programs: the Ramah Navajo Community, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and Tohono O’odham Nation. These stories were originally gathered by the University of Oklahoma’s American Indian Institute (Wesner, 2012), to be featured on the organization’s Wellness in Native America blog. The programs in this report were interviewed along with three other tribally-supported traditional foods programs from the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. While each of these programs is unique and diverse, they share in common the Traditional Foods Program, an initiative supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Native Diabetes Wellness Program (NDWP). Although the author is currently working with the NDWP on a compendium of traditional foods stories, the stories in this report were compiled prior to this partnership.

Resource Type
Citation

Native Diabetes Wellness Program. (2014). Good Food is Power: A collection of traditional foods stories from the Ramah Navajo Community, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Tohono O’odham Nation. Native Diabetes Wellness Program. Native Diabetes Wellness Program, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Atlanta, Georgia. Paper. (https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/projects/ndwp/pdf/part_ii_good_food_is_power-508.pdf, accessed May 16, 2023)

Native Entrepreneurship in South Dakota: A Deeper Look

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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 recommendations to promote Native entrepreneurship in South Dakota.  

Resource Type
Citation

Malkin, Jennifer and Johnnie Aseron. Native Entrepreneurship in South Dakota: A Deeper Look. Northwest Area Foundation. Washington, D.C. December 2006. Paper. (http://cfed.org/assets/documents/native_entrepenuership/phaseII_report.pdf, accessed March 24, 2014)

First Nations Economic Development: The Meadow Lake Tribal Council

Year

A new approach to economic development is emerging among the First Nations in Canada. This approach emphasizes the creation of profitable businesses competing in the global economy. These businesses are expected to help First Nations achieve their broader objectives that include: (i) greater control of activities on their traditional lands, (ii) self-determination, and (iii) an end to dependency through economic self-sufficiency. Two key elements of the First Nations economic development strategy are: (i) capacity building through education, institution building and the acquisition of land and resources, and (ii) the formation of business alliances among First Nations and with non-First Nation companies. At the same time, and at least in part in response to these two elements of the First Nations' development strategy, a growing number of non-Aboriginal corporations are adopting business alliances with Aboriginal people as a part of their strategy for long-term corporate survival. The economic development activities of the nine First Nations of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council provide an excellent example of this approach to development 'in action '.

Resource Type
Citation

Anderson, Robert B. and Robert M. Bone. "First Nations Economic Development: The Meadow Lake Tribal Council." The Journal of Aboriginal Economic Development. Volume I. No. I. 1999. Paper. (http://iportal.usask.ca/docs/Journal%20of%20Aboriginal%20Economic%20Deve..., accessed May 5, 2023)

Best Practices Case Study (Territorial Integrity): Yakama Nation

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The Yakama Nation is located in central Washington State. Their struggles with land loss began over 150 years ago when, in 1855, the federal government pressured the Yakama to cede by treaty more than ten million acres of their ancestral homelands. In the latter half of the 1800s and early 1900s, individual tribal citizens were granted fee patent land titles, which both freed surplus reservation land for non-Indian settlement and permitted tribal citizens to sell their land to non-Indians. Faced with difficult economic choices, many tribal citizens did so.

This pattern of landholding, in which Indian and non-Indian parcels are interspersed across the reservation, creates a jurisdictional morass: a majority of the nation's land is potentially subject to competing state and county claims of jurisdiction. Indeed, the checkerboarded nature of the Yakama reservation has led to numerous jurisdictional disputes over land and water, boundaries, hunting restrictions, environmental regulation, and taxing authority all of which have set the Yakama Nation at odds with individual non-Indian land owners as well as county, state, and federal governments. These disputes have slowed development, compromised the nation's economic interests, and challenged its stewardship over the land and local wildlife.

Recognizing the need for a comprehensive and effective program to manage, control, and promote land re-purchase, the Yakama Nation Land Enterprise (YNLE) was created in 1950 to provide the nation with an institutional vehicle to confront the crisis of land loss by buying and developing land within the reservation...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

National Centre for First Nations Governance. "Best Practices Case Study (Territorial Integrity): Yakama Nation." A Report for the National Centre for First Nations Governance. The National Centre for First Nations Governance. Canada. June 2009. Case Study. (https://fngovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/TI_Yakama.pdf, accessed March 8, 2023)

Best Practices Case Study (Economic Realization): Hupacasath First Nation

Year

When Hupacasath Chief Judith Sayers and the council decided to harness the power running through their lands, the result was a best practices model of how to build a small hydro project. Widespread opposition to the Duke Point natural gas facility in the late '90s was the impetus for the council to explore other options for resource development in the Hupacasath territory near Port Alberni, B.C. When faced with the possible environmental impacts of another electrical development, Hupacasath knew they needed to be intimately involved in the planning, decisions and development to minimize negative effects and ensure the First Nations shared in the benefits...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

National Centre for First Nations Governance. "Best Practices Case Study (Economic Realization): Hupacasath First Nation." A Report for the National Centre for First Nations Governance. The National Centre for First Nations Governance. Canada. June 2009. Case Study. (https://fngovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ER_Hupacasath.pdf, accessed March 7, 2023)

Best Practices Case Study (Economic Realization): Osoyoos Indian Band

Year

The Osoyoos Indian Band (OIB) is located in the interior of British Columbia. They are a member community of the Okanagan Nation Alliance. The Band was formed in 1877 and is home to about 370 on-reserve band members. The goal of the OIB is to move from dependency to a sustainable economy like that that existed before contact. 

Situated on 32,200 acres in one of Canada's premier agricultural and tourism regions, the land has offered the band opportunities in agriculture, eco-tourism, commercial, industrial, and residential developments. With a focus on supportive education and training, the band operates its own business, health, social, educational and municipal services. The result is virtually no unemployment and financial independence...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

National Centre for First Nations Governance. "Best Practices Case Study (Economic Realization): Osoyoos Indian Band." A Report for the National Centre for First Nations Governance. The National Centre for First Nations Governance. Canada. June 2009. Case study. (https://fngovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ER_Osoyoos.pdf, accessed March 7, 2023)