Building Community in Native 'Nations Within Nations"

(originally posted to the Global Citizenship blog at the Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management)

Building Community in Native ‘Nations Within Nations’

Greetings global citizens. My name is Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy, a 1991 Thunderbird graduate. First let me say it is a real honor and pleasure to be a part of this new adventure in blogging. I do a little blogging of my own for personal and professional reasons elsewhere, and I stay active personally and professionally with Facebook. So this seemed like a natural progression in my local, regional and global connections. Now a little about me and my organization for this first time around: I am the vice president and chief operating officer for Oweesta, a U.S. Native community development intermediary based in Rapid City, S.D., serving indigenous people throughout the United States.

We also liaise at times with international indigenous organizations, and I was fortunate last fall to attend the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. We were the only Native organization at the event, and it was great to see the global focus with all the work necessary for Native nations in the United States. Since then, I have had a number of topics on my mind that have driven my work and might be lead topics to throw around here on this blog.

At Oweesta we focus on the development of small Native community-based lending and capacity building institutions, known as CDFIs (community development financial institutions). These are primarily nonprofit Native loan funds, but there are also Native credit unions, banks, venture capital funds and microenterprise funds. We also provide training and technical assistance in the areas of enterprise and entrepreneurship development and financial education and asset building for Native communities and nations. Oweesta acts as an investor/lender to these local institutions as well, once they have reached a certain level of maturity.

Our work requires what I call a “nimble and locally sensitive” approach to each community we work in. With more than 500 different federally recognized Indian tribes and many more state recognized, non-recognized, urban, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native communities and nations, we must have a global approach to “nations within nations.” This kind of community development investing touches upon socially responsible investing, social entrepreneurs, sustainable economies, Native values, ethics, customs and creating independent, sovereign Native communities. At its core, the work is “feel good” but very personal for all of us and directed toward the practical aspects of small business development, home ownership, asset creation, wealth development – things that every nation, small or large, and every citizen, global or local, should be able to achieve.

We are hopeful that, with the changes in the U.S. administration, change will come to the First Peoples of America and that there will be concerted efforts to improve the lives of Native people. I look forward to the coming conversations here and elsewhere.

Original blog url: http://knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/globalcitizenship/2009/01/23/sarkozy-banoczy/