The Federal Reserve’s district bank in Minneapolis has a simple goal for its latest outreach into Indian country: it wants to maximize tribal economic development.

Susan Woodrow, co-director of the Center for Indian Country Development and head of the Minneapolis Fed’s Helena, Montana office, said during an interview and a webinar that the 9th District Minneapolis Fed has worked in Indian country for the past 25 years, ever since a Community Reinvestment Act challenge to a bank merger on behalf of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe.

According to the Montana Standard, nonprofit Native Action brought the CRA challenge against First Interstate Bank in 1991, alleging deficiencies in providing credit to the Northern Cheyenne reservation. The Fed ultimately denied a merger First Interstate was seeking, sparking what Woodrow said was a cooperative relationship since then.

Woodrow would like the 9th District and the CICD to be the focal point for the entire Federal Reserve System’s 12 districts’ activity in Indian country.

The CICD has just brought on a second co-director, Patrice Kunesh, who used to be deputy undersecretary of Rural Development (an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture). She has “tremendous knowledge in this area,” Woodrow said. She is of descent from the Standing Rock Lakota community, the bank said. The Standing Rock reservation is in both North and South Dakota.

The office plans to bring on a number of attorneys from the district’s law department as well as using Dick Todd, vice president for community development at the bank. It has also hired a second Native American intern in its Helena office.

The Center plans “to facilitate the flow of credit” for tribes in the Minneapolis Fed’s district, which includes Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, Woodrow said.

Current activity is focusing on legal infrastructure/property rights institution building, research and data analysis, Indian Business Alliances, CRA trainings, Native CDFI research and support and financial inclusion and education, according to the webinar.

Future plans include developing a ULC model tribal probate code, developing tribal lands, implementing the federal HEARTH Act, and education.

Woodrow pointed to the tribal lands initiative as very important. It will identify barriers to economic development and include advancing homeownership on tribal lands.

Homeownership is “an area we see a need to be much more engaged in,” Woodrow said. “There’s a huge need. You can’t separate homeownerhip and economic development. They go hand in glove.”

The CRA training will prove to be valuable to commercial banks and especially community development financial institutions (CDFIs), which have boomed in Indian country over the past 15 years, she said.

The Center has a leadership council of 10 including some names quite familiar in Indian country, such as Jacqueline Johnson Pata, Tlingit, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, and Else Meeks, Lakota, chair of The Lakota Funds and a director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines.

The idea for the Center “grew out of the growing expertise in the Bank in this area,” Woodrow said. “Economic development needs to be approached very holistically,” she said.

“By developing the Center we are demonstrating commitment to this work over time,” she said. “The message is: we intend to be engaged in this space for the long term.”

The Center was launched on April 3 by Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Fed.