Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 11, 1 November 1993 — Native American activist a leader in search for alternative economic models [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Native American activist a leader in search for alternative economic models

by Patrick Johnston The modern United States eeonomie system has not treated native Americans well and plenty of statistics bear this out. Some reservations have unemployment rates as high as 95 percent, family incomes averag-

ing less than $7,000/month, and few. if any, loeal-ly-based businesses to keep money circulating within the community and provide jobs and stability. Rebecca Adamson thinks the time has eome for a change.

Adamson is a Cherokee Indian and founder/president of First Nations Development Institute, a 13-year-old development organization that supports small. community-based eeonomie projects on Indian reservations. "The Western eeonomie system is based on individualism, greed, and a scarcity of resources," she argued in her keynote speech at last month's CBED conference, adding that native people value sustainability and kinship, values that eome into conflict with modem eonsumer society. "In today's economy someone who shuffles paper around for a mergers and acquisition deal makes an enormous amount of money. Is that person really more valuable than a teacher?" The First Nations

Development Institute is a multifaceted organization that is primarily concerned with promoting the eeonomie well-being of native Americans but doing so in a way compatible with their values. It carries out research, advocacv, marketinc. and educational

programs and makes loans all with a keen eye on the loeal eulture and its needs, both material and spiritual. FND1 began with a government grant of $25,000. It now has a general operating budget of $1.6 million and $4 million in fundine.

"We are the largest and probably the only native development organization interested in culturally appropriate development," Adamson pointed out in an interview with Ka Wai Ola. "It is a high-quality process that allows dialogue to unfold and create solutions." It created what was to be the first microenterprise loan fund at the Lakota reservation in South Dakota, providing funding for small, informal businesses. This was in response to a 90-95 percent unemployment rate and border town banks that, despite holding millions of dollars of tribal money, would not lend any at reasonable rates to help tribe members start up businesses. "Our flow-of-funds study showed that Indians had big accounts but had to pay 23 percent interest on loans. The tribe

was spending lots of money in border towns but none was coming back." FND1 also found that most households were involved in some sort of micro-business and 30 percent of families derived half their ineome from such activity. The loan fund aimed at promoting these businesses, increasing household ineome, and ultimately improving the quality of life. An integral part of the development process has been getting the different communities involved in decisions made about the way money is spent in the community. This ensures a prominent plaee for the eultural values of the tribe in the decision-making process.

"No two communities are identical but there are eommonalties throughout. Ail have a belief system tied to the land and stress the importance of balance and harmony." Native people also share the effects of poverty and aleoholism, both of whieh have run a destructive course through reservations. Adamson believes that when you start doing things the way native people are accustomed to, this kind of help begin to reverse the decline brought on by centuries of neglect. "When you start listening to native people they rekindle their analytical skills. ... 1 think the microloan program has provided native peoples with a recognition of their own knowledge."

Rebecca Adamson