BY HEATHER FLEMING
If you’ve ever driven through the Navajo and Hopi nations, you’ve seen fast-food joints, gas stations, maybe a few motels. What you don’t see from the road are the hundreds of small local businesses — from cafés to barbershops — that we need to create lasting jobs and opportunities for our people.
But just because you can’t see small business owners doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Although they might not have a shingle or a storefront, our communities are full of creative, hardworking entrepreneurs. Take fashion designer Marisa Mike, who integrates traditional woven Navajo textiles into high-end evening wear, or chef Carlos Deal, whose food truck in Tuba City draws crowds craving his sushi and stir-fries. From cutting hair to chopping firewood to designing websites, almost everyone on the reservation does something to put food on the table.
JAKE HOYUNGOWA
Marisa Mike of Marisa Mike Designs has created a buzz on fashion-show runways in Arizona with her evening wear, which incorporates authentic woven Navajo textiles.
If you’ve ever started a business, you know it means late nights and early mornings. Most startups fail, but there’s nothing more satisfying than beating the odds and seeing your idea take flight. I started my career in Silicon Valley, and though that was tough, I can honestly say I don’t think there’s a harder place to start a business than on the Navajo Nation.
Of course, there’s a reason for that. Early tribal economic-development models weren’t set up to help small businesses flourish. Instead, they were designed to make it easy for corporations to extract natural resources, like coal, from tribal lands. Tribal governments made agreements with multinational companies in hopes of bringing jobs and economic opportunity to their communities. And those activities have brought jobs and revenue to the tribes, but they’ve also caused harm to cultural and traditional practices, and damaged our air, water, and land. And, when those natural-resource jobs go away, we don’t have a strong corps of other employers ready to help us absorb the blow.
Navigating the steps to obtain land to run your business on the Navajo Nation can become a full-time job. Add to that a history of exclusion and the absence of mentors to turn to when you need help, and getting a business off the ground starts to feel almost impossible. But small businesses drive healthy economies. If our people want to succeed, we need to grow hundreds of them.
In response to this need, the Grand Canyon Trust established a virtual business incubator — called the Native American Business Incubator Network — to support Native entrepreneurs based in and around the Colorado Plateau. For years, the incubator team coached Native-owned small businesses, helping them navigate regulations, permits, and financing options, and create a network to support and uplift one another.
By 2017, the Trust’s virtual incubator was providing trainings to over 40 businesses, had helped seven new companies get off the ground, and had an additional 17 Native companies in incubation.
JAKE HOYUNGOWA
Hopi cycling instructor Samuel Shingoitewa helps others meet their fitness goals with his mobile fitness equipment repair and maintenance business, Sunbear Fitness and Repair Services.
Along the way, the incubator formed alliances with organizations and individuals developing novel programs of their own, including the organizers of the Navajo Nation’s first chamber of commerce. In 2014, the incubator partnered with my organization — Catapult Design — to host what we billed as the Navajo Nation’s first entrepreneurship and innovation event — a daylong conference filled with hands-on workshops and one-on-one mentoring sessions to help kickstart business ideas. We weren’t sure if anyone would come. We called the event “Change Labs,” and we were floored when it sold out. The Shiprock Dine’ College library auditorium was filled with Native people of all ages hungry for change in their communities and seeking peers and guidance to help make their business dreams a reality.
Catapult Design and the Grand Canyon Trust have co-hosted Change Labs every year since, using the annual event as an opportunity to listen to Native entrepreneurs describe the challenges they confront every day. Most communities on the reservation don’t have internet access, making it difficult to start and run a business in this digital age. Many homes on the reservation don’t have physical addresses, making it hard to apply for a tax identification number.
Once we saw it laid out visually, it was crystal clear where the virtual incubator and our Change Labs events were falling short. We needed a stable physical location where business owners could access the tools and the resources they needed. To make the change we wanted to see required a significant shift.
Heather leads a community brainstorming session for the coworking space in Tuba City. RAYMOND CHEE“Projects like Change Labs are an important part of the long-term solution to building our economy,” Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said recently. “The hundreds of small businesses that Change Labs will serve are key to our nation’s long-term job growth and prosperity.”
Creating opportunities for local job creation is a sincere path to increasing household incomes, improving health outcomes for families and children on tribal lands, and reducing reliance on destructive industries like mining and industrial tourism. In short, Change Labs provides a rare opportunity to improve and provide sustainable economic solutions in one of the most remarkable landscapes in the United States.
I hope you’ll visit us online at nativestartup.org to learn more and find out how you can be part of the change.
Born for the Bitahnii clan, Heather Fleming is the founder and former CEO of engineering and design firm Catapult Design. She now serves as the executive director of Change Labs, supporting Native entrepreneurs across the Colorado Plateau.
