2024's Top Stories: Our favorites

As journalists, some stories stay with you. That’s been especially true this year as we’ve covered the entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders shaping Indian Country’s economic future. 

From the first Native American Treasurer’s exit interview and Indigenous designers bringing fresh perspectives, to tribes navigating complex energy sovereignty choices, these are some of the stories that resonated with us in 2024.  

Tradish Twist: Indigenous designers bring Native perspectives to booming tabletop gaming market

Storytelling is intrinsic to many Native cultures, so breaking into the exploding tabletop gaming industry seems a natural fit for Indigenous designers. In August, we spoke to two such designers who both approached games from a cooperative standpoint, as opposed to competitive. Designers Connor Alexander and William Thompson, both Cherokee, discussed building games around shared goals as opposed to trying to destroy or dominate your opponents. 

It’s a storytelling element and game design that isn’t present in a lot of board games, or even tabletop roleplaying RPGs, which often center player objectives on pillaging, killing, or otherwise conquering opponents. Instead, the story told through each game becomes one of community, and shared prosperity - something that reflects Indigenous perspectives on sustainable growth and long-term stewardship, per our story on the matter. 

As a journalist with a lot of nerdy hobbies, Chez found joy in seeing his culture and perspective reflected in this medium.  Talking to designers about their takes on a traditionally Euro-centric industry made for some of his favorite conversations this year. 

Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy launches $100M fund at Clinton Global Initiative

This year was a major one for tribal clean energy. Unprecedented federal funding, new tax credit mechanisms, and game-changing financing have all led to the start of a boom in Indian Country energy. But even with so much support coming down the line, barriers remained. Pre-development costs - things like environmental studies, feasibility studies, and interconnectivity plans all presented a million- are a barrier that needs to be addressed before most funding can be accessed. 

Enter energy nonprofit Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy and its Indigenous Power and Light Fund for Energy Sovereignty. Announced in September this year, this fund hopes to bring $100 million in philanthropic and foundational support for tribal clean energy pre-development costs. It kicked off a wave of similar funding at the Department of Energy and through nonprofit organization Climate United, both of which announced subsequent pre-development funding.  

In a year of important energy stories, this one marked the beginning of a concentrated effort to collapse one of the biggest barriers to entry for the clean energy transition ahead, making it one of our favorite stories. 

New federal rules aim to end tax confusion for tribally owned businesses, boost clean energy projects 

In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act opened the way for tribes - who are typically tax exempt - to claim tax credits on renewable energy projects. Sources speaking to Tribal Business News called it a game-changer, but subsequent confusion through the IRS on which entities under tribes were tax-exempt muddied the waters and slowed capital.  

In 2024, the US Treasury clarified 30 years of murky policy around tribal tax exemptions by proposing a new rule certifying that tribally owned enterprises shared their tribal governments’ exemptions. The rule also explicitly states tribal enterprises can apply for the above renewable tax credits.

While the rule is in its final stages of public comment, the impact of certainty around tax exempt status caused ripples throughout Indian Country, capping off two years of questions around an economic tool that could vastly accelerate energy development and private investment in Native communities. We ran several stories on the topic, and that initial announcement was met with a lot of excitement and questions, marking it as a high point of our coverage this year. 

Supreme Court refusal lets Seminole Tribe keep exclusive mobile gaming rights in Florida

A long-running battle for mobile gaming exclusivity in Florida concluded this year when the Supreme Court refused to hear West Flagler and Associates v. Haaland. The case concerned two gaming companies in Florida who challenged a gaming compact between the Seminole Nation and the state which allowed mobile betting - using tribal servers on tribal land - to take place across the state. 

The Supreme Court’s refusal to try the case further left in place an existing decision from Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals, which found that locating tribal servers on reservation lands was sufficient to say betting remained on-reservation. The case immediately produced ripple effects, prompting the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe in Colorado to launch a lawsuit attesting their sportsbook shouldn’t have been shut down on similar grounds. 

We’ve been following this story since the early days of Tribal Business News, beginning with the initial decision to shut down Seminole Nations’ Hard Rock Digital platform and then opening it back up later. Reporting on the conclusion - and its potential impact on the rest of the country - led to some eye-opening conversations about gaming and sovereignty. 

Northern Chumash secure support for marine sanctuary with offshore wind compromise 

Despite a surge in clean energy projects, not every form of renewables has proven popular with tribal communities - particularly in instances where sovereignty might be impacted. A wave of off-shore wind projects along the West Coast has prompted questions about the wind farms’ impact on culturally important fish populations, sacred sites, and tribal mariculture. 

Even amid the controversy, one solution emerged when the Northern Chumash Tribe, under the leadership of tribal council chairwoman Violet Sage Walker, secured promises from major off-shore wind projects that they would not protest the sanctuary’s establishment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Walker was clear that she didn’t see it as an endorsement of off-shore wind, but a way to separate the issue of energy and the issue of the marine sanctuary - something her family had been working on for a decade. 

This story highlighted the nuanced conversations going on around renewable energy and sovereignty, and showed that the clean energy transition was more complex in Indian Country than wider reporting might have implied. 

SPECIAL ANALYSIS: Native M+A in Federal Contracting 

In 2024, Tribal Business News broke new ground with this comprehensive analysis of Native entities' mergers and acquisitions in the federal contracting sector, collaborating with researchers and HigherGov to produce the first systematic study of this growing trend. The analysis revealed that Native entities had acquired companies generating nearly $10 billion in federal contracting revenue over the past 23 years, with M&A deals involving Native entities comprising 4.1% of total federal contracting sector deals in 2023.

This groundbreaking research complemented our ongoing coverage of Native federal contracting — from major transactions and contract awards to legal challenges and policy changes — including our exclusive reporting that Native entities won a record $23.3 billion in federal contracts in fiscal 2023, marking eight consecutive years of growth. Together, these stories documented the increasing sophistication and market power of Native entities in federal contracting, showing how American Indian tribes, Alaska Native Corporations, and Native Hawaiian Organizations are leveraging these opportunities to build sustainable economies.

U.S. Treasurer Chief Lynn Malerba to step down after historic term

Government press conferences can be a bore because they're overly scripted and guided by political messaging. But it was a rare pleasure being part of a press conference with a few other journalists from Native media outlets and U.S. Treasurer Lynn Malerba (Mohegan) for an "exit interview" days before she retired. During her two years on the job, Chief Malerba has been such a bright light in the federal government — a smart, funny, deeply empathetic leader who also happens to be the first Native American with her signature on U.S. currency.  

During the call, Chief Malerba spoke candidly about feeling intimidated when first offered the historic appointment, but she saw it as an opportunity to bring Native voices “forward in a bigger way.”  She shared stories about her grandchildren spotting “Lynnie dollars” with her signature, talked about taking Mohegan language immersion classes back home, credited Secretary Janet Yellen’s support, and shared her hopes for the Treasury’s Office of Tribal and Native Affairs, which she helped establish. "We walk in two worlds," Malerba said, "but we're part of this country. And the fact that there is an Indigenous person on the money for the first time is probably long overdue." 

Tribes finding practical uses for AI: accounting, analytics, and grant writing

Like much of Indian Country, we were a bit cautious about diving into artificial intelligence (AI) this year. When we did get around to it, this story captured exactly how Indian Country seems to be approaching AI: practical, measured, and with a healthy dose of skepticism.  It was fun to write and edit.  While we created the graphic for the story with AI, the story’s slyly humorous lede was created by human intelligence (ie, Chez).