- Details
- By Brian Edwards and Chez Oxendine
- Economic Development
As we head into the new year, Tribal Business News will be paying special attention to these developing storylines in the coming weeks and months.
What does this year’s election mean for Indian Country?
Former President Harry Truman coined the term “Do Nothing Congress” back in 1948, after legislators passed 511 bills that were signed into law during that session. We wonder what moniker he’d bestow on this year’s Congress, which passed just 27 pieces of legislation that became law in 2023, making it the most ineffective year in congressional history. (To their credit, one of the laws that passed involved a federally recognized tribe.)
It’s hard to imagine that 2024 will be more productive, given the dysfunction in the House and the fact that election years often provide a slowdown in legislative activity and productivity. It raises considerable concerns about unfinished legislation for Native housing, food sovereignty, tribal safety, and Indian health programs — as well as policies that respect tribal sovereignty.
The Biden administration continues to put forth considerable effort to embed policies and people that fund, support and represent Native concerns, but time may be running out. As one tribal leader put it to us: “We don’t know if we have one year left, or five.”
Will capital be more accessible in Indian Country?
The last month or so was rife with photo ops and press announcements about improving access to capital in Indian Country. At the White House Tribal Nations Summit, President Biden signed a historic executive order to ensure federal funding for tribes would be “accessible, flexible, and equitable.” He also announced the launch of a Tribal Access to Capital Clearinghouse and a request for information from tribes about their capital needs.
In connection with the Summit, the Treasury reached out to tell us about the second round of the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) awards that allocated $86 million to two dozen tribes. It’s part of a $500 million set-aside for tribes to make credit more accessible to Native small businesses. We also heard from the Small Business Administration about the double-digit growth in SBA lending to Native businesses under the Biden administration, though the underlying numbers suggest a relatively low uptake rate when compared to the total number of Native-owned businesses in the country.
Also noteworthy, the federal government finally finished its yearslong process to update regulations for the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which was set up in the 1970s to ensure that banks are lending in disadvantaged communities. Some are calling the CRA changes a “game-changer” for Indian Country.
There’s a lot of promise and, so far, a lot of positive press. We’ll be interested in seeing how freely and effectively the capital flows in Indian Country in 2024.
Will green financing take hold in Native communities in 2024?
Tribes have been hesitant historically to finance clean energy projects with debt because they often don’t want to, or can’t, borrow money. So they tend to rely on grant funding, which rarely provides the amount of capital needed to cover the costs of such projects. As a result, there aren’t a lot of clean-energy projects that get done in Indian Country.
That could begin to change dramatically in 2024 with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which includes $20 billion in two programs that will provide accessible, affordable financing for clean-energy projects in disadvantaged communities, including tribal nations. A national coalition of nonprofit Native lenders submitted an application in hopes of securing up to $850 million through the GGRF’s Clean Communities Investment Accelerator. Separately, a consortium of mission-driven lenders and investors with ties to Indian Country submitted an application for the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund with a target of allocating10% of its funding award to tribal communities.
The EPA anticipates making selections for both programs by March 2024, with funding to follow by July 2024. We’ll be paying close attention.
What’s being done to open doors for Native Americans in tech careers?
A report published late in 2023 by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society and the Kapor Foundation revealed vanishingly small numbers of Native Americans in both technology related classes and careers.
In a population already facing widespread poverty, being shut out from one of the fastest-growing job markets in the United States closes an important path to improving those circumstances.
In 2024, Tribal Business News will explore the barriers to entry for Natives hoping for tech careers, as well as what’s being done to dismantle those barriers. We’re going to take in-depth looks at every level of involvement, from computer science classes at primary schools to entrepreneurship to Indigenous employees working at tech giants like Intel and Microsoft.
We’re also going to look at where technology and tradition intersect in Indian Country, and how tech entrepreneurs are developing modern solutions to Indigenous problems.
What storylines do you think we should be tracking in 2024? Let us know: [email protected].