Indigenous Governance Database
community development financial institution (CDFI)
Bankshot Episode 46 Report: Ignored by banks, Indigenous communities build their own financial system
As seen from the air, the land is an expansive, grayish-brown terrain cracked open by the winding Missouri River with scattered clusters of black dots. On the ground, the dots become cows — so many cows — and the land becomes a roiling sea of prairie grass heaving under currents of wind you can see…
Access to Capital and Credit in Native Communities: A Data Review
As the second part of a two-part follow-up to the NALS, this report uses a range of datasets to document the evolution of Native Communities’ capital access since 2001. Its three main sections summarize data describing access to capital and credit for Native consumers, Native business owners, and…
Access to Capital and Credit in Native Communities
This report emerges from the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Fund’s commitment to helping Native Communities develop through increased access to capital. The ideas presented are grounded in an understanding of current economic conditions in Native Communities and in established…
Winnebago Community Development Fund
Establishing a framework for community development based on the goals of the government and its citizens, the Winnebago CDC Fund builds toward long-term development by matching funds for grants, building community projects, supplementing community infrastructure, increasing educational…
Frank Ettawageshik: Exercising Sovereignty: The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians
Frank Ettawageshik, former chairman of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians (LTBBO), discusses how LTBBO has systematically built its legal infrastructure in order to fully and capably exercise the nation's sovereignty and achieve its nation-building goals. He discusses some of the…
Honoring Nations: Tom Hampson: Native Asset Building
ONABEN Executive Director Tom Hampson discusses the resilient entrepreneurial spirit that exists in Indian Country, and how it can be a key to transformative change in Native communities.
Honoring Nations: Tom Hampson: Native Asset Building (Q&A)
ONABEN Executive Director Tom Hampson fields audience questions about ONABEN's work and strategies for cultivating entrepreneurship in Indian Country.
Honoring Nations: Kristi Coker-Bias and Allen Pemberton: The Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation and the Red Lake Walleye Recovery Program (Q&A)
Honoring Nations symposium presenters Kristi Coker-Bias and Allen Pemberton field questions from the audience about the Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation and the Red Lake Walleye Recovery Program.
Native Nation Building TV: "Promoting Tribal Citizen Entrepreneurs"
Guests Joan Timeche and Elsie Meeks examine the pivotal role that citizen entrepreneurs can play in a Native nation's overarching effort to achieve sustainable community and economic development. It looks at the many different ways that Native nation governments actively and passively hinder…
NNI Forum: Asset Building for Indian Country
The Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy (NNI) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona convened a panel of leading experts to discuss the fundamental obstacles standing in the way of asset building in Native communities, and the innovative strategies that Native…
Honoring Nations: Kristi Coker-Bias: The Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation
Former Executive Director Kristi Coker-Bias provides on overview of the Citizen Potowatomi Community Development Corporation and discusses how it is working to cultivate private sector development in her community, which she says is essential to Native nations' efforts to develop sustainable…
Strengthening the role of Native CDFIs: A conversation with Gerald Sherman of the Native CDFI Network
Roughly 8 percent of the 917 community development financial institutions (CDFIs) in the U.S. are categorized as Native CDFIs (NCDFIs), which means they serve primarily American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian communities. Due to a mixture of historical, political, and geographical…
Gerald Sherman, ILCC Native American Financing Pioneer, Receives Prestigious 'Visionary Leader Award'
Gerald Sherman (Oglala Lakota), a pioneer in developing financial products for disadvantaged and underserved Native communities, received the prestigious ‘Visionary Leader Award for Outstanding Achievement’ at the 10th Annual Native Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Convening…
The Private Sector: More Than a Job Creator
Jobs, jobs, jobs. They’re on everyone’s mind these days, and Creator knows our reservations are in dire need of jobs. While America has experienced a lingering unemployment rate around the 9th percentile for the past couple of years, our reservations have been enduring unemployment rates much…
Gardens Flourish on Pine Ridge
John Yellow Hawk’s garden is one of many new feeders of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation’s developing economy. This past year, Yellow Hawk and 20 other Oglala gardeners each received a $1,000 loan and a $2,000 grant from Citigroup via Lakota Funds, a 26-year-old Native community development financial…
Building a More Sustainable Future on Cheyenne River
This brief video showcases five of Four Bands Community Fund's loan clients who have used their loan proceeds to advance green and social entrepreneur concepts on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.
PBS "We Shall Remain": Micro-Loans
Kristi Coker, executive director of the Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation, discusses how the CPCDC, one of more than 30 Native Community Development Financial Institutions in the U.S. hopes to build Native economies through small loans to Native entrepreneurs...
Tribal experience with children's accounts
“Accounts at birth” is an important idea at the frontier of savings and asset-building policy. How to make them effective is an important topic for research. This paper presents ideas and initial findings from the experience of American Indian nations–America's first asset-builders–with such…