Tom Hampson

Honoring Nations: Tom Hampson: ONABEN: A Native American Business Network

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

Former Executive Director of ONABEN Tom Hampson presents an overview of the organization's work to the Honoring Nations Board of Governors in conjunction with the 2005 Honoring Nations Awards.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Hampson, Tom. "ONABEN: A Native American Business Network." Honoring Nations Awards event. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Tulsa, Oklahoma. November 1, 2005. Presentation.

Tom Hampson:

"It's a great privilege and an honor to be here. My name is Tom Hampson. I'm Executive Director of ONABEN, a Native American Business Network. I want to thank the Harvard Indian Economic Development Project Honoring Nations, but particularly Amy [Besaw] and Jackie [Old Coyote] and the site review team of Jonathan Taylor and Joan Timeche. One of the most unexpected outcomes of this process was the fact that you guys were so professional as both counselors and cheerleaders and colleagues and now friends that as we work on projects together I'm sure in the future that this has been a real exciting process for us. [Thank you.] We'd not be here if it were not for the support of the guidance of our board of directors, who believe in our mission. Of course we would not be here at all if it had not been for the opportunity to serve Indian people as chartered by the sovereign nations that we serve. I'd like to list those: Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Confederated Tribes of Siletz, Umatilla, Warm Springs, Colville and Cowlitz and some ten other tribes that we have done programs and associates with. I'd like to recognized Chairman Dolores Pigsley of Siletz who is here in the audience, Board of Trustees Chairman Antone Minthorn of Umatilla, Colville Business Council Chairman Harvey Moses, Jr., Sal Sahme of Warm Springs Economic Development Department and David Tovey of the Coquille Tribe and Umatilla enrollee. Dave is also a former ONABEN board member and represents the Economic Development Corporation of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and ATNI itself is the mother ship, which has been a very important and critical strategic partner for us as ONABEN has grown.

The evolution of ONABEN over the last 14 years represents a mix, a mix of opportunities, of Indians, of non-Indians, of tribal leaders and entrepreneurs, of technocrats and hundreds and hundreds of wonderful people and those of the Native American entrepreneurs, or as we have corned the term "Indianpreneurs." It is a mix that mirrors that marketplace in which we all must participate and in which we all must compete. ONABEN was chartered in 1991 by a guy named Mitch Connelly, who at the time was the Director for the Spirit Mountain Community Development Corporation, or Economic Development Corporation, for the Grand Ronde Tribe. And Mitch persuaded four Oregon tribes that it was in their interest to integrate their economic development strategy to include the kind of diversification and energy that can only come from creating a private sector on the reservation. And thus, the coalition of tribes was born in Oregon with the mission to enable Native Americans to realize their dreams for a better quality of life through owning and operating a small business, to strengthen Native American communities by building Native American confidence in their abilities to start and run businesses, to create comfortable and safe environments in which people can explore their dreams, to foster relationships which increase business survivability, and to contribute to the well being of the Native and non-Native communities around the area. That's an expansive and a very integrative kind of mission for an organization. And it was -- as you might think in the pre-gaming era -- a time in which discretionary income with tribes was very scarce and yet those tribes chose to make an investment not only in an intertribal organization, but most importantly in the creation of a small business center on their reservation, which was a prerequisite for joining the organization.

The organization has a service delivery model that is simple in concept, but very complex in operation as all intertribal organizations are. It features a network of...a small network staff to provide curriculum, provide expertise and support services to tribally run and operate its small business centers on the reservation. Over the years, we've discovered a number of principles that we think any Indianpreneurship program ought to have: that we need to provide services at the local level to match the entrepreneurs in that economy, in that place, in those industries and at that level wherever they are, given their level of aspirations, given their level of expertise, meet them where they are and provide environments in which they can explore their ideas, whether it's home-based businesses, expanding businesses, high-growth businesses, artists to engineers, contractors to inventors. The whole notion is to build a community around the entrepreneur and to integrate the tribe's economic development program with the individual private sector development. This all puts a lot of pressure on the network to make all of those forces happen, and because it comes down to building relationships that transcend these boundaries.

At the network level we are a content provider, a bridge builder, a product and service innovator and policy advocates to the tribes. Our classes are taught by entrepreneurs, independent business owners themselves from the local level that are selected by and in concert with the local tribe. These folks are local bridge builders to the local economy. In most recent years, we have focused our efforts on curriculum development for all levels of entrepreneurship and we're very proud to announce that as of November the 15th when we hold our annual conference Trading at the River, we are going to unveil our "Indianpreneurship: A Native American Journey into Business," our own branded curriculum based upon the stories of ONABEN clients. We support small business center managers in the tribe in evaluating and developing the most appropriate support systems for their private sector. We scan the environment for the best ideas and help the tribal managers apply them if it's appropriate to them. We bring federal, state, intertribal foundation, private sector resources to these collaborations.

So what has changed since ONABEN has been around? When I first came to the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation in 1972, it was just after a grand economic development plan to utilize the land claim settlement money for tribal enterprises had been thoroughly trashed by the electorate in favor of disbursements to per capita payments. The confidence level by the people was very low in the tribe and in themselves to pull themselves up by anything, bootstraps, moccasin ties and let alone an economic development plan. But as a student of my mentors, I listened to the stories of the prosperous times before contact and even into the early reservation period where rich traditions of trade and economic gardening supported the people. We went to work to recreate in some modern form the prosperity of those days. Visionaries like Antone [Minthorn], planners like Mike Farrell and project managers like Dave Tovey and hundreds more like them across the country went to work and sustained this renaissance for the last 30 years.

There were very few small businesses on the reservation in the 1970s when we started, but that began to change as the tribe's prospects began to change and I'm sure it's the same where you come from. As the more the tribe has succeeded, the more the confidence is built, the more you see people going into business for themselves. The length between tribal economic development and individual private sector hold the next key to this renaissance. We believe that organizations like ONABEN, the Lakota Fund, Oweesta, Four Bands, all represents opportunities to play an important part in foraging these linkages, individual entrepreneur to tribal enterprise to local, regional, global marketplace. I think...but we got to do it I guess by going back is the other thing that we have discovered and I think Bill Yellowtail, who will be a speaker at our conference this coming in November says it best. He says, 'It is only circling back to the ancient and the most crucial of Indian values and understanding that the power of the tribal community is founded upon the collective energy of strong, self-sufficient, self-initiating entrepreneurial, independent, healthful and therefore powerful individual persons, human beings, Indians.' We exist to celebrate the accomplishments of these Indian business owners, their enterprise managers and the tribal councils that support them.

Trading at the River embodies the philosophy that we can look back to go forward, we can listen to stories from people like Mike Marchant who can talk about the collection of salmon at Kettle Falls, the drawing and bundling of those fish and the transportation over to the Buffalo Country, to stories from Antone and others about the berry fields of Mt. Adams, the fishing platforms of Celilo, where people met and traded and made connections that lasted forever. Trading at the River allows us to come together and ask the difficult questions of how we can move forward. At Trading at the River, we dedicate ourselves to the question that Antone has asked for the last 30 years of 'what is an Indian economy? What is Indian economic development? What does that mean?' We don't know the answer to that question, but we know the people who will and those are the entrepreneurs, the tribal leaders, the enterprise managers. Our role is to keep the conversation going, to disseminate knowledge, and to keep the magic of the network alive, vital and growing. Our job is to help build a community of traders, people of commerce, Indian entrepreneurs. The journey has been going for a long time and we are looking forward to the next stage and we want to share it with you. The people of the Harvard Project have affirmed our work, your recognition has humbled and inspired us. Thank you very much."

Amy Besaw:

"We'll have a few minutes of question and answers. As we're doing the question and answers, if Flandreau would come up here and join us at the side of the stage that would be great. Thank you."

Elsie Meeks:

"My whole career and life and work has been about supporting entrepreneurship and allowing Natives to become entrepreneurs, and at the same time I really feel like it's important that through this there starts to be changes made at the local level in a real, systematic way. And my only real question about ONABEN, and I'm very familiar and you guys work really hard and you've done really good things, but how rooted in the community and how much difference does it make at each tribal level, and I guess the other kind of question around that is how much ownership do the tribes feel to this or is this just a regional organization that serves tribes?"

Tom Hampson:

"That's the essence of the question, I mean that's the essence of our management challenges, and it's true for every network kind of organization, 'cause there's always the natural tension between the intertribal network and the individual members of that network and how much autonomy does each one have, and so it's all about relationship building. And there's no question that just like business development or economies in general, they vary from place to place. We've had extremely positive and strong relationships and support at say for example the Grand Ronde Tribe, and then as inevitably happens, you get the winds of political change, bring a new council with new priorities and some programs are favored and some are not. That program was completely terminated about three years ago at the tribal level. We maintained our relationship with the tribe to provide the same classes and counseling using the same people actually as a contract basis, and we're seeing the Grand Ronde tribe's interest in that program rekindle and we see cycles like that all through Indian Country. The most critical part of that is that, and this is why if all we're doing is just putting on classes to whoever asks us to put on classes or send out workshops consultants or whatever, is to insist that the tribe make the investment in creating a small business development center of its own. Now those folks, they do all kinds of things. They just don't counsel entrepreneurs. They inevitably get drawn into, based upon whatever department they're located in, into the priorities of those departments and the priorities of that tribe so the small business center manager Kathleen Flanagan at Umatilla is working on a small business incubator program. She's doing cash-flow analysis for an enterprise for Wild Horse Resort. So she'll split her time as directed by the tribe. And so the ONABEN programs in entrepreneurship are only a partial priority but most importantly though they are a priority and sometimes it's lower and sometimes it's higher. Our job is in a diplomatic way as possible to try to encourage those tribes to elevate those priorities and that's what we've seen. I think more lately what we've seen the power of something like Trading at the River to do is to get in the policy makers' heads the importance of entrepreneurship as a tribal economic development strategy not just as a bunch of individual businesses that are always harassing them at council meetings about not getting enough tribal work. So we're seeing a change in that perspective at the policy level. But as you all know it's a very delicate walk to take."

David Gipp:

"Dave Gipp here. I had a question. What distinguishes ONABEN's efforts from other regional, tribal or even state strategies toward successful economic development? What makes your project and your strategies distinctive I should say compared to other regional or tribal or even state strategies?"

Tom Hampson:

"I think it's that process that we've just described. The metaphor for that process is or the catch phrase is Walking the Talk. Because we don't staff up, there's only four of us in the central office, sometimes three, sometimes five depending upon our funding sources. We have to depend on independent contractors to provide the bulk of the services and the tribal centers and so we have to facilitate a relationship between an instructor, for example Lou Blake, an MBA, Stanford MBA, ex-entrepreneur, sold out his company, moved from Seattle to Matheau on the Colville Indian Reservation, now drives over three mountain passes to teach classes at Nespelem. Lou represents an individual in a marketplace and another culture and a whole body of knowledge that he brings to that place, to those people and a whole new perspective. If he were a tribal employee, if he were our employee, he would not be the same person, he would not bring the same perspectives, and I think that's one of the unique factors. The other factor about that is from just a pure survival point of view has an organization is if our funding sources are reduced, we reduce the number of independent contractors we use and the number of classes that we can provide. So we can flex up and down and I think that...we try not to build empires, we try to build relationships and strategic alliances so we get the work done. We do a lot of work...it used to be that the small business development centers in Oregon particularly didn't serve Indians at all. And now when we go into a community like at Coquille, Coos Bay, Southern Oregon, we will immediately contact the SBDC, have them help us hire instructors, get them to co-sponsor our classes so that our constituents know that they have a whole group of resources that are available to them. So we try very much to walk our talk in terms of boundary expanding as well." 

From the Rebuilding Native Nations Course Series: "Citizen-Owned Businesses: Improving the Quality of Life"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Native leaders and scholars discuss the ways that citizen-owned businesses contribute to an improved quality of life for Native nations and their citizens.

Resource Type
Citation

Hampson, Tom. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 17, 2009. Interview.

Merdanian, Tina. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Rapid City, South Dakota. March 3, 2011. Interview.

Pratte, Clara. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. February 15, 2011. Interview.

Tilsen-Braveheart, Kimberly. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Rapid City, South Dakota. May 26, 2010. Interview.

Clara Pratte:

“Just from a personal perspective, I had to go off reservation to go to school, to do laundry, to do everything. Just the convenience of that, of being able to be in your own community, and to have something that’s run by your own community, not have to travel such vast distances. So it is extremely expensive to live in rural America period, and anything we can do to help the population itself. And then of course the ripple effect of providing not just service-industry jobs, but, you know, jobs where people can become upwardly mobile, I mean trades and skills where you can really, really sustain yourself and your family.”

Tom Hampson:

“We oftentimes get mixed messages from tribal council that small business owners and small business development is important, but it’s not important enough to invest significant dollars of tribal resources into those support programs. On the other hand, those tribes that do that tend to match sort of the Harvard [Project] profile of successful tribes. Because the recognition of the investment in entrepreneurship is also an investment in human capital development, in social capital development, and, but fundamentally, in family asset building, because small businesses are a very efficient way of generating family assets.”

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart:

“That to me is one of the most powerful things, in all of the work that I do, is really seeing the entrepreneur be able to carry the pride of what they’re providing for their families. And they may not be able to buy the big fancy house, but nine out of ten times, that’s not why they’re doing that business. They’re doing it because it’s hard work and it’s something their community actually needs. It’s a service that isn’t there. And we need to make things as a community. We need to create what we want for our children. And they’re so excited, because now they understand that they don’t have to go to a tribal job. They don’t have to be a teacher -- I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be -- I'm not saying that they shouldn't be -- but they don’t have to be a social worker. That now, for the first time, they have an opportunity to be able to be whatever, and do whatever, they want on their reservation. They don’t have to move to Denver or Minneapolis in order to be successful. They’re realizing that they can be the mainstream idea of success, but in their home with their Lakota values, and money can’t buy you that.”

Tina Merdanian:

“I think, you know, the ripple effect is first the education process, and really defining what it means to be a business owner on the reservation -- how that effects the family in providing the financial support as well. But at the same time, it’s creating a labor force, it’s creating venues in which education can happen, not just at the Chamber [Pine Ridge Area Chamber of Commerce] level, but you’re seeing it through the CDFIs, you’re seeing it through the local college in entrepreneurship programs beginning and taking root. You’re also seeing the fact that through taxes, it’s creating the revenue within the reservation. The variables are just enormous in regards to what it’s doing on the reservation. For example, Subway opened up -- first year, employed 15 people. Second year, they branched out into Kyle [South Dakota] and they employed 30 people. Thirty people who are able to bring an income, a steady income, to home. And what that creates for the family is that sense of stability, that sense of security as well of pride, that 'I can provide for my family,' that 'I am learning a new skill,' that 'I am able to move out and move forward.' And it’s just amazing to see people really blossom professionally as well as through the culture. And for me to see these people, and that they’re doing well -- you know, being able to have a vehicle now, being able to pay for rent, to get their own place, from moving out of a home of 17 people in one home, and being able to have their own place now -- it’s just amazing in regards to what it’s doing on the reservation.”

Honoring Nations: Tom Hampson: Native Asset Building

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

ONABEN Executive Director Tom Hampson discusses the resilient entrepreneurial spirit that exists in Indian Country, and how it can be a key to transformative change in Native communities. 

People
Resource Type
Citation

Hampson, Tom. "Native Asset Building." Honoring Nations symposium. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September 17, 2009. Presentation.

"That was really inspiring and educational. How entrepreneurial is that approach? And so it underscores the thing that I've noticed in coming here, which is that there are so many threads that are weaving in and out of the conversations here. And I want to try to capture some of those but first I have to admit that I was a little bit unnerved about coming here. It's a long plane ride -- it's five hours -- gave me plenty of time to work. In fact I was looking through my remarks and Sarah Vermillion Echo Hawk looked and said, 'What, are you writing a book?' And she said, 'You're worse than Mike.' And she was talking about [Mike] Roberts. I said, 'Oh, no. Please don't say that.' [Because] Mike Roberts is deathly afraid of something, which is that both our mothers are from Grant's Pass, Oregon, and he's so scared that we're related somehow. I'm doing genealogical research as we speak to determine if in fact I have something that I can hold over him. I expressed my reservations about what I might say today to Jonathan and he said, 'Oh, just tell stories.' And I said, 'Well, okay, I'll do that.'

So here's a little excerpt from a story that is in our second curriculum, called 'Indianpreneurship: Growing a Business in Indian Country.' It's designed and being beta tested now at Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation and it's designed as a peer mentoring, coaching and educational experience for existing business owners and we are writing the chapters as we speak.

Autumn Rainmaker was the dreamy type. She never planned anything. She just let things happen in her life. She just did what she fancied and let life take care of the rest. 'Being open to the universe,' that's what Autumn called it. Being a free spirit is how her mom described Autumn. Space Cadet, that's her dad. That was before culinary school. Autumn decided on culinary school the way she decided on everything back then. She didn't pick it, it picked her. Autumn had just been dumped by Dallas Brings Yellow. She was walking back to her apartment from school thinking that his name should be Dallas Leaves Yellow when she turned the corner and saw this group of people about her age standing in front of the culinary school having a smoke break. The students were gathered in small groups with their white coats and aprons. They all had tall white chef's hats on and thermometers in their pockets. Autumn liked the hats. A young man named Jeff was standing in the middle of the sidewalk. His curly red hair was sticking out of the sides of the chef's hat. Autumn slowed down to move around him and then she just stopped. She looked up into his piercing blue eyes. Tears began to well up and she tried to hold them back by concentrating on the thermometer in his pocket. She recovered quickly. 'Hi, could I bum a cigarette?' That's how it started and now she was in her third year of being the proud owner of Raindrops Catering. Much has changed in the last three years that Autumn had been totally open to. Jeff didn't last long. He left culinary school to become an electrician with his dad. Autumn was totally okay with that. She quit Jeff on the same day she quit smoking. It wasn't something that she planned to do, it just seemed like the right thing to do, get up in the morning, say goodbye to Jeff and bad breathe and start a business. That was her dream, start a business. It quickly became an obsession.

Now Autumn's dilemma is discussed in the curriculum with a series of questions, and then there's a conclusion at the end of the chapter. We use these stories in our curriculum just as we use -- and you'll notice that I'm doing little 30-second spots here -- that we do in our DVD, which are actual vignettes of real entrepreneurs from reservations in Oregon and Washington, and these are four- and five-minute conversation starters. We created these so that the entrepreneurs could also use them as files to put on YouTube or whatever other marketing devices they have. I may just set that up here. No, it'll fall.

It's an incredible honor to be asked here. It was an incredible honor to be honored by Honoring Nations in 2005 and then to be invited to come to speak to you. It's very special since when I walked in the room I saw lots of good friends, some very old-time colleagues, not old colleagues -- speaking of Antone Minthorn -- and even family. Robin Butterfield is married to, is a first cousin, I'm married to Robin Butterfield's first cousin. That would be my wife. And I see Robin left, you know, family, you can't pick your relatives. But as soon as I walked in the energy and the camaraderie was really, was palpable and I felt immediately comfortable and I think we all owe that to the spirit that Honoring Nations staff and board bring to this event. And I want to thank Megan [Hill] and Amy [Besaw Medford] very much. It's very special. [Because] it doesn't always happen to me when I walk into a room, especially of Indian people.

But I'm struck with the notion of these threads, as I got back in, just the things that we learned today from this panel about the entrepreneurial way that these social enterprises are approaching what they do to serve the community. I also learned that in this group all you have to say is 'shack up' and you get an immediate rise, so I've learned that so I'm trying to find a story that has shacking up in it. I guess I did. Actually I did, didn't I? Some of these concepts that were introduced by the structure of the symposium itself, and then what we've heard since are really quite incredible, the way they weave together. It underscores the importance of gathering together to see how these threads would weave in and out, how they connect and how they divide, how they might be woven together to create a basket or a blanket of ideas we might take from here for our own use.

The metaphor of the blanket reminds me of Pendleton, and Pendleton reminds me of my second, and in many ways, my adopted home, the Umatilla Indian Reservation. And as I flew over that territory yesterday, I was reminded of many things. But this week, this week, I was particularly reminded foremost of the Pendleton Roundup. Antone is laughing as we speak. When I came to the Umatilla Indian Reservation to work as the fourth tribal employee and its first non-Indian, it was 1973. It was not far from the 60s -- protests, Black Panthers, AIM [American Indian Movement], peace and love, and contradiction. It was a time of activism in which many people seeking transformation in themselves, in their institutions, in the world. It was that, with that kind of lens as an activist-oriented person, that I first viewed the Pendleton Roundup. The impressive cowboys and Indians, the Indian encampment next to the rodeo grounds, the Happy Canyon Pageant, which is if you have...How many have seen the Happy Canyon Pageant? It's a Wild West extravaganza with real horses, real cowboys, real Indians, white people dressed up like Chinese coolies tiptoeing like chipmunks with made up buck teeth and squinty eyes. The locals at the rodeo leaving the stands to go to the leather buck room when the Indians came into the arena to dance. The year before -- on the basis of the complaints from the Humane Society -- they had enlarged the pens for the rodeo stock and took the space out of the Indian encampment. The irony of the insult was not lost on the Indians, but they were willing to put up with a lot to be part of the show since its inception in 1910.

There's a very charming story about the founders of the Pendleton Roundup who had invited the tribes from the Umatilla Reservation to participate, Antone's great-grandfather. And there was some doubt as to whether they would show up. Their arrival was announced by looking to the east and seeing a great cloud of dust as the tribes road their horses to the event. As one tribal member opined in the Confederated Umatilla Journal, 'I think about the magical appearance of a large Indian village that was built in one day. From the beginning the Indians liked the idea because it was a place for them to show and compete in roundup events.' Now, not to say that there wasn't a lot of grousing about the roundup. In fact, when I was there, in fact there was even some occasional rebellions and as legend has it, or as Donald Sampson would have you believe, the legend, he and his brother Curtis departed from the script one night and rode a horse back into the arena and routed their enemies reversing the storyline, if only for one glorious, intoxicating and probably intoxicated moment.

Well, many things have changed, including my attitude towards that event. I found myself spending four days, all four days at the Roundup supervising soccer players, selling Cokes and watching my children play in the band and showing off the event in all its Wild West contradictions to visiting friends and families. As Wes Greeley, a pioneer descendent and Roundup board member said, 'For years, the Pendleton economy has driven the tribes. Now it's the complete reversal and turnaround.' He praised in the article the leadership of the Confederated Tribes and admitted it was now the tribes that drive the economy of the county. The Confederated Tribes has been honored here in this forum a number of times. Their successes for their innovations have become economic development legend that we all hope will continue, including joint venturing with Accenture, the casino and the resort, the Umatilla Basin Project which brought fish back to the Umatilla River under Antone's leadership that required a lot of negotiation with non-Indian farmers and ranchers. And so as the years pass -- and this is why I'm belaboring this Roundup story, it's a long event, four days -- and as the years passed, the evidence mounts for what Harvard and Native Nations celebrate as effective tribal government development. I come back to a very uncomfortable truth: that a large part of the Umatilla story at some level has something to do with that damn Roundup. Why? Because if I were to make my own list of what are critical elements to effective tribal government, it would be the number one on that list, would be the extent to which the members and leaders are willing to engage and learn from what organizational development people call boundary spanning but we call walking in two worlds.

The Roundup, near a hundred-year-old institution now, has built traditions and most importantly relationships. Armon Minthorn, board member and religious leader, says, 'It's important that we continue to support the Roundup because we share the same tradition with the people of Pendleton. It doesn't matter what race of people we are; tradition is tradition.' Admittedly, it took money and the acquisition and assertion of sovereignty and power to bring these transformations in behaviors, and notice I say behaviors and not attitudes, but CTUIR [Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation] at Confederated Tribes has reclaimed its position of authority in the region by being effective boundary spanners, negotiators, listeners and watchers. The last 35 years has been quite a rodeo. It has been truly transformational and the changes that I have seen in this time span in tribes all across the country has been an inspirational but also excruciatingly painful. And I think many tribes have entered a new and potentially even more transformative period as we speak, one that has planetary consequences. And believe me, I wrote this before we had Chief Lyons and Manley's comments, but I was so delighted to be affirmed in something, that sometimes I'm accused of being overly optimistic or romantic. Because what I often say is that the future of the planet is in the hands of the Indians, because of the principles common to Indigenous societies that hold the interest of the land, the water and all creatures is generally equal to people's interests.

Native American models for economic development hold great and probably the most promise for long-term sustainability. Indian Country has the unique opportunity to develop new economic forms and systems that combine communitarian value systems with capitalistic competitive forms of commerce. It's truly a transformative time or the potential for this. So what does Indian Country have to do to live up to this awesome responsibility? Well, first of all, tribes and communities don't have to do anything. Since when did such a daunting challenge fall upon those who had so little to do with our planetary fall from grace? And yet, Chief Lyons talked this morning about the challenges that we have faced before us with global warming. And said that it will be up to our generation. Let it not be our generation upon whose watch the world crumbles, or more accurately drowns. We need a lot of help. Global crises require extraterrestrial assistance. Manley Begay challenged us with a question about how do we integrate spirit, the spiritual into the revitalization process. The notion is a very important test of our capacity to be a planetary savior. There are many similar tests we could all pose for measuring effectiveness for this role. How do we educate? How do we treat our elders? How do we treat our fellow species? These are all good tests.

Here's another one and finally to the point of my presentation, how do we reclaim the marketplace in the name of the Indian trading sector? That is, Indian trader sector? How do we treat the entrepreneur? That is a good test for a tribe's potential to write their ticket to the destiny on this destiny train. The entrepreneur is called in private sector, small business owner, citizen-owned business traders, independent scallywags -- call them whatever you like -- they're used to all of it. The entrepreneurs have a very special role to play in Indian Country. They are the bridge from the past to the future. I love the story about talking to modern elders about the notion of living in the pueblo, the notion of going back to go forward. Entrepreneurship was culturally, socially and economically a part of the fabric of the community, inseparable like the first strands woven into the structure of a basket, built to hold roots or berries or dried salmon. If we are ever going to have a world that is in balance again, the entrepreneurs have to play an important part in achieving and keeping that balance.

So how do tribal governments and tribal communities support entrepreneurs in the community, especially the Autumn Rainmakers of the world, will be one of the key tests of how Indian Country will be able to transform ancient and enduring values and visions into viable and sustainable economies. If Indian Country can rebalance things, it can truly save the world. So entrepreneurs, small business owners, traders -- whatever you call them- the orneriest ones that come to council meetings, are pretty important. And it's quite frightening when you think about it that the future of the world might be in the hands of such scallywags. Mike Meyers, my favorite Seneca philosopher, has issued similar challenges for us. In reclaiming the marketplace, he says we must infuse enterprise with spirit, for spirit is the source of all innovation, all creativity, the spirit of enterprise. There is much to be gained. Small businesses, primarily family business, extended families with a basic cultural, social and political units in Indian Country, no matter how problematic they may be. Small business ownership is shown to be a very effective way of accumulating assets. Therefore support and growth of family-owned business strengthens the fabric of the society. Small business owners are the reservoir of what we now call social capital.

As you know, in pre-contact times there were all kinds of clans and systems to create events to support culture, to support the doings of the work of the people. Many of those institutions have been destroyed. We're now seeing in transformational way through the creation of chambers of commerce, the organization of entrepreneurial activity, a renewal of that kind of social capital. Unfortunately, from the entrepreneur's point of view, the focus has been on tribal enterprise, often at the expense of citizen-owned enterprise. There are many good and poor reasons for this. Our job is to help tribal policymakers more informed choices in creating their economic mix. There are many useful distinctions about what is appropriate for enterprising endeavors for tribes and for citizens and the Harvard Project has gone a long way in helping make those distinctions meaningful and outline the choices. But it's clear to me that without a vibrant trader sector we are at risk of being just another economic engine just running on fuel or on fumes, as Manley was talking about, subject to the irrational marketplace hanging by slim margins to competitive advantages that are not necessarily of our own making.

Now I have no quarrel with tribal enterprises. Tribes -- first, last and always -- and tribal enterprises are the critical element in making the transformative changes that have to occur in tribal economies in partnership with the small business sector. The social enterprise sector is another critical element. It's not about profit, it's about entrepreneurial; it's about the spirit of enterprise in all that we do. I think we're entering an incredible, as evidenced by our panelists, incredible era in which we're seeing joint ventures and collaborations with Native and non-Native institutions. The CDFI example was a perfect one or the, I'm sorry, the new market tax credits. Boundary spanning must incorporate reservation and urban populations. We're seeing a trend away from, thank God, the old res/urban Indian dichotomy and one of the boundary spanning activities that is making that bridge a reality is entrepreneurship and the desire for entrepreneurs to go back to their home reservations and to create economic opportunities between the centers. We must get past the old boundaries and collectively build Native assets throughout the territory that can be used in all of Indian Country, keeping the homeland, nurturing and healing and growing it but exporting the spirit of the homeland and importing the capital and using that to develop new forms of tribally controlled capital.

And I'm out of time, so I'll make one other editorial comment about the notion of capital, and Sherry [Salway Black] said it so well, is that the essence is not the nature of capital; it's who is controlling the capital. And it's up to Indian Country to create their own definitions about what capital must look like and act like. It can be human capital, it can be debt capital, social capital, equity capital, non-cash capital, but ultimately it has to be Native capital. And the CDFIs are wonderful things, but they're sort of being promulgated as an intervention institution rather than growing up from the source on the community level. They can be an important tool, but they have to be managed by Natives changing the name of the game. We can only make transformational change with words and ideas that cause us to change our points of view and usually that means by tapping into spirit.

All of these stories that we tell at ONABEN are stories that tell us who we are and what we might gain and what we might lose. We have lots of stories to tell. Maybe some of the stories that will be passed down from generation to generation can be about how our generation saved the planet. We can only hope. And in the spirit of Roundup, let's go forward and 'let her buck.' Thank you."

Honoring Nations: Tom Hampson: Native Asset Building (Q&A)

Producer
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Year

ONABEN Executive Director Tom Hampson fields audience questions about ONABEN's work and strategies for cultivating entrepreneurship in Indian Country.

Susan Jenkins:

"I'm Susan Jenkins with the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. I wanted to ask Tom a question. You have, with your Indianpreneurship been working with a lot of CDFIs. Can you give us an idea of what is emerging as far as new businesses that you're seeing?"

Tom Hampson:

"Indianpreneurship is... She's referring to the curriculum that -- as a social enterprise -- has become a significant part of our mission and our revenue stream. In fact, it is critical to our survival as a social enterprise. We also do training and curriculum sales. Thank you for asking that question. Actually, this comes back to what I was saying about CDFIs, or community development financial institutions, as being sort of introduced notions, by virtue of the fact that they are generous ideas about carrying capital to a place that needs capital with a lot of inherent structure in that program. And what CDFIs promise is debt capital in communities to support entrepreneurship. The reality is that, especially at the start up phase, debt capital is a very inappropriate kind of capital to finance an early stage business -- although entrepreneurs do it all the time, credit cards, friends and family and associates -- but still it's not the most desirable kind of capital. And so we're exploring -- by using the World Bank model, for example -- a way of creating equity capital injections into promising ideas using a business plan style competition that's based on the Alaska Marketplace model, which the Alaska Federation Natives manages in Alaska.

And fundamentally, what that does, where I'm getting to is that the reality is that by injecting capital into anyplace doesn't necessarily generate a particular stream of business or deal flow. That has to come out of the entrepreneurial spirit and the opportunity analysis that they do at the local level, and then that needs to get financed. And so generally,what we're seeing is the tail wagging the dog on the CDFI movement in the northwest. We are collaborating with Shore Bank Enterprise -- cascaded to service CDFI -- to help tribal CDFIs create an entrepreneurship development system and they're doing the back office part of the loan servicing and financing. And there's like eight different CDFIs emerging, there's lots of capital around, but the deal flow is what's lacking. It hasn't generated a lot of new businesses but the businesses that are there -- the mom and pop retail outlets, the gas stations, the hair salons, the woodcarvers and other artists. They're all there in the community and our challenge is to match and marry capital to their needs, and we hope that the CDFI can be a part of that solution."

Mediator:

"We have a question over here."

Mary Lee Johns:

"Hello there. My name is Mary Lee Johns and I'm with Rio Tinto, Senior Advisor on Tribal Governments and Native Communities. My question is to the gentleman. I'm curious about your response to supply chain activities by identifying like... I think that we really missed the boat when it came to the casinos. The fact that those casinos all over Indian Country are being supplied by non-Indian operations and I think that we have to be prepared to begin to develop our supply chains to these... I mean that's where the action is, that's where the cash is and yet we seem to -- as Indian, Native people, Indian people -- we don't look that far down the road. We look to the casino for providing us jobs but we don't look to the actual supplying. We should be the entrepreneurs developing our businesses to supply the casinos or any other business. You're talking about the rodeo. I'm sure you have an Indian contractor who... I know in South Dakota we have all these Indian contractors who have rodeo, they do the rodeo contracts; and so not only do they provide the bucking horses and the bulls and all that... But those are the kinds of things that I think that we as Indian people need to start looking at and I'm just wondering what your response is to that."

Tom Hampson:

"It's an incredibly complex and interesting topic. We have an annual conference, Trading at the River, that; it's a lot like this in terms of its tone and flavor which is thoughtful discussion and talking about how traditions of commerce from the pre-contact can inform new ideas. And that issue is a constant workshop topic every year. We beat it up constantly over and over again. The person that can best address that from a business model standpoint is John McCoy -- sitting next to you -- because there are incredible, the dilemmas that... One of the things that is a very amazing and complex problem is the fact that the business model for a casino, for example, is almost requires a business model for supplying it that is mega in proportion that does not favor an entrepreneurial approach. It might favor a tribal consortium, of which there is at least one now that is trying to be launched that tries to address the enormous capacity problems that Cisco Systems -- or what's the other major food supplier? -- they have solved those problems by being mega corporations. And so the entrepreneur, the efforts for the entrepreneurs to break into those purchasing systems is very complex but it can be done, it just depends on what scale you approach it. It's a whole topic in and of itself."

Mary Lee Johns:

"Well, the reason why I'm asking you that is because there is a model."

Tom Hampson:

"Oh, good. I'd love to hear it."

Mary Lee Johns:

"Well, it's not so much the entrepreneur, but it's based upon a tribal model. These friends from Canada may have heard of Diavik, it's our diamond mine, it's Rio Tinto's diamond mine in Northwest Territory. And what we did was -- we have an agreement with six communities -- and what we did as a company is that we saw an opportunity to help develop a sustaining economic there in Northwest Territory. And so we went in and assisted the communities in developing trucking, which is the ice road truckers, the Tlicho government; we also helped to develop an airline that supplies our, flies our workers in and flies our workers out. So there are some models out there and I'm one that I really believe that this model has to be done in other areas so that when a company wants to come in and do business with a tribe, then we need to be able to participate in the supply chain of that particular business if it's on our reservation. And that's why I say casinos is a perfect model for those kinds of things. Granted, it's becoming more of an older business model, but if we're going to begin to be developing anything else on our reservations, we need to begin to think about the supply chain because that's where the... When you're talking about asset building, that's where asset building can be developed."

Tom Hampson:

"I completely agree but what I'm saying is that... Actually, I would disagree at one level, is that casino may not be the best example. But there are other tribal enterprises over which the tribe has a lot more control over the price points that they have to pay in the marketplace that could be, that we are seeing are much more fertile ground for tribal enterprise and entrepreneurship relationships. The casinos are a little bit different problem but they're still an opportunity."