North Carolina is home to eight state-recognized Native American tribes and two with federal recognition. South of Charlotte, there’s also the Catawba Indian Reservation, the lands of South Carolina’s only federally recognized tribe.
When COVID lockdowns stifled the economy in the spring of 2020, shuttering hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues, it hit Native American communities especially hard.
Unemployment skyrocketed as tourism halted and businesses like casinos and restaurants closed. Tribal revenues plummeted, and some tribes were forced to reduce services they offered to members.
In North Carolina and beyond, American Indian tribes often rely on industries like gaming and tourism that can be extra-sensitive to an economic downturn. The Charlotte region is home to one such business: Two Kings Casino in Kings Mountain, run by the S.C.-based Catawba Indian Nation.
Reliance on those kinds of industries affects financial resilience of tribal communities in tough times, and piles on obstacles for a population already facing higher odds of poverty and joblessness. That’s according to a new report from Wells Fargo’s Native American Banking division.
With a potential recession looming and just ahead of Native American Heritage Month that starts Nov. 1, the report offers ways to build economic resilience in Indian Country so tribal communities can better weather the next crisis.
“We really wanted to use the (impact of the) pandemic as an opportunity to reflect on what… Native American communities can do to prepare themselves for economic shocks in the future,” Dawson Her Many Horses, head of Native American Banking at Wells Fargo, said in an interview with The Charlotte Observer. He is based in Las Vegas.
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‘Longstanding inequities’
Native Americans face lower median income levels and higher rates of poverty and joblessness than other racial groups, including white, Black and Hispanic Americans, according to census data.
In North Carolina, Native Americans are more likely to live in rural areas. Just over 300,000 people who identify as Native American or Alaska Native reside in the state, according to the 2020 Census. That’s 3% of the population statewide.
“If you’re looking at a map of where Native Americans are in North Carolina, you see them all around the edges of the state, typically far from the more urban areas,” said Mary Ann Jacobs, chair of the American Indian Studies department at UNC Pembroke.
Economic challenges and that rural geography combine to shape other inequities, like health disparities, she said.
In the Wells Fargo report, analysts state that diversifying tribal economies and driving new investment into tribal areas can help address “long standing economic and social inequities” for Native Americans across the country.
The bank, one of Charlotte’s largest employers, holds $3.9 billion in deposits for tribal governments and tribally owned entities across the country.
“It’s in our roots as a company,” Her Many Horses said, referring to the bank’s Western origins. “We want to elevate (awareness of) the challenges that exist from a financial perspective.”
Building awareness
A persistent lack of data remains one of the most significant obstacles to driving economic development in tribal communities, Her Many Horses said.
Tribe-owned businesses drive much of the economic activity in Indian Country — a term used by Native Americans and others to describe self-governing Native American communities throughout the U.S.
Those sovereign governments aren’t required to disclose information the way that other entities are, like state governments or public companies, the report stated.
“Tribal governments and businesses are the primary economic actors, not entrepreneurs and small businesses like mainstream America,” said Her Many Horses, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota.
The report also highlights two other obstacles: a gap in broadband access and a fragmented capital landscape — meaning investments in tribal areas often come from many different kinds of financial institutions.
Wells Fargo proposed a few broad solutions, such as increasing partnerships between governments and private firms to drive more capital to Indian Land, and strengthening inter-tribe coalitions to make joint investments that fuel development
“We don’t want to just identify issues,” Her Many Horses said. “We want to help.”
In North Carolina, Jacobs said, a good start would be just increasing awareness of the state’s Native American communities.
“Most people don’t know that North Carolina has eight state-recognized tribes,” she said. “I think the biggest thing to know is that our state has and continues to have one of the largest populations of Native Americans east of the Mississippi.”
This story was originally published October 27, 2022 5:40 AM.
