During “Indigenous Decade” American Indians leverage sovereignty into economic boom

NEW YORK – During the United Nations’ “International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples” the indigenous people of the United States have leveraged their sovereignty into an unprecedented, and totally independent, explosion of economic development and self-determination.

Rather than relying on the UN or foundations for their economic well being, American tribes have forged their own opportunities in gaming, housing and community development. At the same time, individual Indians have become entrepreneurs in numbers never seen before.

While gaming is the most obvious and successful route for tribes, it is not the only one. In the housing area, tribes have used a law with “Self Determination” in its title to bring private capital by the millions of dollars into tribal homelands. A flurry of Native community development efforts, including such diverse projects as an intertribal fish commission, an ancient teachings school, and an eagle sanctuary, have garnered national attention. And the number of individual Indian entrepreneurs jumped an amazing 84 percent in the five years between 1992 and 1997 – 10 times the national average.

The UN investment in its indigenous program and foundation funding of Native projects together total less than $100 million a year. Numbers like these are completely swamped by the $12.7 billion in revenue generated by gaming for tribal governments in 2001, according to the National Indian Gaming Association.

According to NIGA, the Indian gaming juggernaut includes 201 tribal governments engaged in class II or III gaming, operating a total of 321 facilities in 29 states.

Some 25 percent of the 300,000 jobs generated by Indian gaming have gone to Native people, said the trade group, with some remote areas hiring up to 80 percent Indians.

Seventy-three tribes issue per capita payments to their members, which is one of five approved uses of gaming income. The others are to fund tribal government operations or programs, to promote tribal economic development, to make charitable donations, and to fund local government operations.

A study of the impact of tribal gaming in one state, Washington, shows a more local version of gaming’s economic muscle.

The report, “Background to Dream,” by Cheryl Simrell King and Casey Kanzler in collaboration with the First American Education Project, noted increases in employment and household income for those living in Washington gaming tribe areas.

“The Chehalis Tribal area showed a 23 percent increase in employment rates from 1990-2000, compared to a 6 percent increase in the county of Grays Harbor, and a 2 percent decrease statewide,” noted the authors. “Median household income rose 106 percent, compared to a 46 percent increase in the county and a 47 percent statewide increase.” (They acknowledged that the Census data they used includes non-Indians who live in tribal areas. Fifty-six percent of those living in the tribal area identified themselves as Indians.)

Quoting NIGA on the Tulalip Nation, they reported “unemployment on the Tulalip Reservation dropped from 65 percent to less than 10 percent since the tribe opened its gaming operation in 1991.”

Their conclusion? “As a direct result of gaming, tribes are moving toward achieving their goals of self-governance and are building crucial relationships in their surrounding communities.”

In the housing arena, tribes have made a significant engagement with the private sector since the passage of a landmark bill called NAHASDA (Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act) in 1996.

NAHASDA commanded tribes to begin stretching their federal housing assistance dollars by partnering with the private sector, and ended old federal programs like Mutual Help, giving tribes the responsibility of charting their own courses to fill a housing need that has been estimated at 220,000 units nationwide.

Many tribes have stepped up to the plate. For instance, about three dozen housing projects have been developed in Indian country using the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, in which an outside investor buys equity in the project.

The amounts invested are significant. Indian Country Today recently reported a tax credit deal on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana in which mortgage agency Fannie Mae invested $2 million towards building 20 units of housing. Upwards of $100 million in outside money has been invested in Indian country through this program alone.

Fannie Mae since NAHASDA has increased its investment in Indian country year to year. For 2002, it put a total of $217 million (tax credits and other investments) into Native American housing, nearly tripling the $81 million it invested the year before.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, one of the nation’s top five mortgage lenders, is the biggest participant in the federal government’s HUD 184 guaranteed Indian mortgage program. It has made more than $20 million in loans to individual Indians in Indian areas through the HUD 184, which doubled lending year to year in fiscal 2002.

HUD’s Title VI program also leverages the money tribes get from the government for housing. They can borrow several times their yearly allotment, 95 percent guaranteed by the feds, through this underused program. Its potential was shown last year when the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma obtained a huge $50 million loan from Bank of Oklahoma to build housing for its tribal members.

The bond market has also been tapped to finance housing, this time for the White Mountain Apache tribe on the Fort Apache reservation in Arizona. A mortgage revenue bond of $25 million was sold in the first financing of its kind, which is building around 250 homes on the reservation.