America's New Entrepreneurs
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union AMERICA'S NEW ENTREPRENEURS BY RICHARD J. MARGOUS My grandchildren, you are living in a new path. In the future your business dealings with the whites are going to...
...Adamson and her group are changing the way policymakers in Washington think about Indians, even the way Indians think about themselves...
...The BIA's plan, he warned, "would insure our continued dependency and take away our tribe's last and best opportunity to become self-sufficient...
...The new economic path he envisioned for his people proved largely unnegotiable...
...Then she brought in pro bono consultants from several Wall Street investment houses, including the Salomon Brothers...
...In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, the late Ben Quigno, a tribal elder, summed up the problem...
...From experience we know that the greatest beneficiaries will be the area merchants, people who care little about us, only our money as long as it lasts...
...The weavers' work improved, and so did their sales...
...Now the tribe required another kind of assistance...
...The hard times that customarily plagued the reservation had been made harder by deep Federal cuts in tribal assistance and welfare...
...Instead, with the blessings of Congress and the Bureau of Indian Affairs...
...homespun...
...What Adamson brings to the process is "microcare," a steadfast attention to the minutiae of economic progress...
...As is the case with other economic interest groups, part of the job has to be accomplished in Washington...
...Not every undertaking enjoys success...
...Impatience, then, with the tardy gratifications of economic development has afflicted Indians and non-Indians alike...
...it ran to questions of Indian dependency vs...
...The money, meanwhile, has been safely collecting interest in a local bank, and making its presence felt in unexpectedly useful ways...
...Yet the money never seemed to make a lasting difference...
...Last year, in partnership with the Saginaw-Chippewa tribe of Mt...
...Still, most of the ventures seem to be taking hold...
...But tribal leaders wanted no part of the plan...
...A key actor in the emerging drama is a 38-year-old Eastern Cherokee named Rebecca L. Adamson...
...The pace of advancement nowadays seems quintessentially Indian—one step at a time...
...She did all the homework," says Kim Sawmick...
...The president of the bank has been very friendly these days...
...no one thought to invest it for the greater good of the tribe...
...First Nations could share credit for the victory—but the staffs work was just beginning...
...They used it to pay credit card bills or to buy TV sets and things like that...
...First Nations has been helping them since 1985...
...Try to make a mark for yourselves...
...Ramah is not famous for its commercial weavers, but the women there had to do something fast...
...The Ramah weavers have given Lori Lea Pourier, an intern at First Nations, a finicky list of questions to ask museum curators and trading post proprietors, e.g.: Where is the best place to sell a rug...
...They axe engendering both cash and hope on the reservations...
...None of the do-gooder investors seemed schooled in perseverance—not the public agencies, not the private corporations, certainly not the churches or the foundations...
...In consequence, there is virtually no private sector on Indian reservations today...
...Earlier, they had watched a $16-million award get squandered in a similar manner...
...No one tied a string around it...
...It's amazing what money can do," marvels Sawmick...
...He's been enormously helpful...
...Pleasant, Michigan, the staff scored a signal triumph on The Hill...
...The notion of "progress" as applied to life on the reservations is being redefined...
...the income was routinely dissipated through per capita distributions—so many dollars to each tribal member...
...A Winnebago corn cannery in Nebraska, after years of struggle, finally and literally collapsed: The roof caved in during a snowstorm...
...First Nations maintains a "policy and advocacy" office there...
...The matter went beyond money...
...On June 30, 1986, Congress gave Quigno and the tribe what they wanted: a measure establishing an "Investment Fund" to be administered by and for the Saginaw-Chippewas...
...The Navajo Weavers' Association of Ramah, New Mexico, offers a case in point...
...The Saginaw saga contained most of the elements that make First Nations unique...
...We couldn't have done it without her...
...Such queries make up the warp and woof of microenterprise...
...selfdetermination...
...Attempts after the turn of the century at massive industrialization and instant prosperity fell of their own weight...
...Oman would eventually interview scores of moneymanagement candidates on behalf of the tribe...
...What are the major consumer preferences in thickness, fineness and edges...
...She is the founder of a nonprofit, no-nonsense enterprise known as the First Nations Financial Project (FNFP), whose mission for the tribes is economic self-sufficiency...
...A big company might discover oil or coal on a reservation and make a deal with the tribe...
...Learn all you can...
...A bookstore at the Oglala Lakota College in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, is barely breaking even...
...The event merits attention, both for the problem it typified and the solution it introduced...
...Now a new generation of Native Americans is again testing the entrepreneurial path...
...Which dyes and colors do customers prefer...
...At any given time FNFP is involved in a dozen or so reservation projects, as far south as the Rio Grande (the Kickapoos of Eagle Pass, Texas) and as far north as the Aleutians (the Alaskan Natives of Kodiak Island...
...First Nations is itself a fair example of nonprofit microenterprise...
...Surely they are warier, and more reflective, in their "business dealings with the whites...
...Kim Sawmick, a young tribal planner, remembers that melancholy moment: "People spent the money in a single weekend...
...The furniture stores opened early in the morning and closed late at night...
...That good man volunteered his services," says Sherry A. Salway, FNFP's vice president and Adamson's second in command...
...Government remains the dominant employer, poverty the reigning industry, welfare the surest means of support...
...Today, more than two years after the initial cry for help, an FNFP staff er is studying the market for Navajo rugs...
...Sitting Bull, addressing an assembly of sioux schoolchildren, circa 1887 Sitting Bull's misgivings were well-founded...
...The problem was a familiar one—per capita distribution of windfall revenues...
...What are the pros and cons of commercially processed wool vs...
...Part capitalist and part tribalist, today's Indian leaders may be wiser than their predecessors...
...Paved with capitalist intentions, it became strewn with tribal tears...
...For instance, the bank appears to have had a change of heart: For the first time in tribal memory it has begun offering affordable mortgages to Indian home-buyers of modest means...
...In time, microcare began to pay off...
...This would have resulted in apportioning equal amounts to each resident of the reservation and to many off-reservation relatives as well—about 4,000 persons in all...
...In the future your business dealings with the whites are going to be very hard...
...Its core staff of five operates from a little house inFalmouth, Virginia, anhoursouthof the nation's capital...
...Or some halfforgotten claim against the government —for stolen lands, for abrogated fishing rights—would finally get settled...
...A leadership untutored in high finance would need training and expert advice...
...For openers, Adamson obtained a $50,000 grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint, Michigan, to help pay for trainers and consultants...
...Because many of the weavers lacked technical skills, First Nations helped arrange for basic instruction in sheep-shearing, woolgathering, carding and designing...
...Three other workers remain in the field, where much of the action occurs...
...it continued with a microcare feast back on the reservation: generous helpings of technical assistance, training, foundation support, and expert counsel from gilt-edge professionals...
...He was Robert J. Desiderio, a former dean of the University of New Mexico law school and co-author of Planning, Tactics and Organization, a two-volume opus on tax-exempt groups and their problems...
...I think we're getting some respect now...
...and she introduced the tribe to Carol Oman, who headed a financial consulting firm in Virginia...
...Microenterprise" is the term that best describes FNFP's canny assault on tribal poverty...
...Next, because the association showed signs of unraveling, FNFP called in an expert on nonprofit organizations...
...The Bureau of Indian Affairs intended to divide the spoils individually as usual...
...Hoping for the best, the women dusted off their looms, formed a cooperative and asked FNFP for sales and marketing advice...
...It began with a policy push in Washington...
...Hoping to prevent a repeat fiasco, the tribe and First Nations pressed Congress to pass a measure that would preserve the $7 million for tribal use...
...an inexperienced tribal council would need help in choosing reliable institutions to manage the tribe's investments...
...Expecting speedy results, they did not hesitate to abandon laggard projects...
...It is probably true, as one admirer of FNFP has observed, that "the staff can take an exotic sounding pipedream and turn it into a dull but successful business...
...The business of microenterprise is small business...
...As Adamson says, "We begin before the beginning," meaning that they build tribal economies from the bottom up, inch by inch and insight by insight...
...The staffs response was typical: It began before the beginning...
...They had a field day—but the tribe had nothing to show for it...
...At issue was the disposition of $7 million, the bulk of an award made to the tribe in compensation for stolen lands and broken treaties dating back to 1807...
...It consists of some 40 women whose dream has been to sell their hand-loomed rugs, pillows and wall hangings on the open market...
...Adamsonhas observed that "Development is the tedious job that remains after the rhetoric of revolution and independence has been spent...
...Sometimes the Indians would appear to get lucky...
Vol. 70 • November 1987 • No. 18
