Jack Stevens: Persistence of a Colonial Attitude

Some years ago, a friend founded a reservation-based business and hosted a launch party in a building that was to become her headquarters.

The place was filled with happy tribal members celebrating the new opportunity in their community.

Amid the merriment, the host’s attention was drawn to her elderly mother, who was sitting pensively by herself wearing a worried look.

“Did you get the BIA superintendent’s permission to start your business and hold this party?” the old woman asked.

Her concern emanated from recollections years earlier, still trenchant owing to their severity. Indeed, historical trauma extends beyond lifetimes and becomes part of the collective memory.

We wish we could say that a colonial attitude on the part of BIA personnel, once prevalent in this great-grandmother’s day, has disappeared. But we can’t.

The attitude survives more often than it should. It crops up every time federal personnel, who often lack any business experience of their own, question a tribal member’s capacity to start or sustain a business or development project.

The key is to recognize the historical roots of such discouragement and to ignore it even when it is well intended.

Had the Citizen Potawatomi Tribe listened to such doubters, they wouldn’t have developed the first Indian-owned, railway-equipped industrial park.

Had the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska listened to them, their business arm, Ho-Chunk, wouldn’t have earned annual revenues topping $417 million.

And if the Southern Ute Indian Tribe had taken such advice seriously, they wouldn’t have become a gas and oil giant and the largest employer in Southern Colorado.