by Singer Horse Capture, Native America Associate
The Grand Canyon Trust is proud to partner with Change Labs to help entrepreneurs realize their dreams and build a strong, resilient, and culturally respectful economy across Native America.
“I get a few things here and there during the week from the local convenience store. But on the weekend is when I drive to town to shop,” says Marsha Greyeyes (Diné) of Kaibeto, on the Navajo Nation. Marsha is not alone. The Navajo Nation conducted a study in 2012 and estimated that $216 million is lost in sales tax revenue each year to border towns like Farmington and Gallup, New Mexico and Flagstaff, Arizona, off the reservation.
For decades, Native business owners have been excluded from national and global economies due to the persistent lack of infrastructure, storefronts, and high-speed internet in tribal communities. Border-town shopping has been blamed on the lack of local businesses on the reservation. But the businesses are here, from food trucks and jewelers to mechanics and tax preparers. It’s just a matter of finding them.
Rez Rising, a new website and mobile app created by Change Labs, seeks to combat this dilemma by bringing needed visibility to small business owners on the reservation and making it easier for customers on and off the reservation to buy Native.
“They say the town of Gallup doubles in size on the first Saturday of every month,” says Change Labs Executive Director Heather Fleming (Diné). “I believe it! Everyone treks to Walmart to get their shopping done followed by a visit to Cracker Barrel or Applebee’s. Meanwhile local grocers based on the reservation, like Rocky Ridge Gas & Market run by Germaine Simonson (Diné), are overlooked.”
In 2018, we set out to change that. Our Rez Rising team collected information from nearly 500 small business owners across the Southwest to kick off development. And we’re not stopping there. We’re still working on getting more small-business owners to sign up. A digital yellow pages for Native American small businesses across the Southwest, Rez Rising is a growing platform. Users can search by location, keyword, or business type. Whether you’re looking for a local food vendor creating traditional foods that you won’t find at Denny’s, a moccasin maker for that perfect pair of new footwear, a contractor, event planner, or graphic designer, Rez Rising is your go-to to find what you need, when you need it.
Rez Rising is designed for small businesses on and off the reservation. The app and website accommodate informal business hours, shifting business locations, and help customers understand what forms of payment a business can accommodate. Because there’s nothing worse than finding the perfect beaded leather belt only to find out that the seller does not accept credit cards.
Millions of tourists drive across the Navajo and Hopi reservations and other tribal lands to get to places like the Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, and Monument Valley, but tourists don’t know where to find Native businesses to support. Rez Rising is a way for tourists to connect directly with local tour guides, buy jewelry directly from artists, and sample Native foods without going through a middleman.
“Visibility for these businesses could spark so much positive change in our communities,” says Heather Fleming. “Yes, it only improves our economy to buy local, but the lack of data on the number of and the types of businesses — formal or informal — operating on tribal lands hinders reform to the business regulatory environment. To make it easier to grow a business here, we need to demonstrate that there’s a large community that could benefit from reform.”
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez is pushing a “Buy Navajo, Buy Local” campaign to address economic diversity on the reservation and Rez Rising fits right in to this effort, leveraging technology to make it easier to do business on tribal lands.
Above all, we hope that Rez Rising will help foster and strengthen the Native entrepreneurial community, and help people recognize that being a Native business owner is something to be proud of, something to aspire to, and something that is, above all, possible. Here are 500 people who have done it, and we know there are 500 more, and 500 more after that. We’re working to change the conversation and the culture around running a business on the reservation.
Whether you live on your nation’s reservation, are part of the Native diaspora, or simply value buying Native as a tourist or from your sofa at home, Rez Rising is ready to connect you with Native-owned businesses across the Southwest.
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