- Details
- By Brian Edwards
- Economic Development
As the Center for Indian Country Development (CICD) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis marks its 10th anniversary, it has emerged as a crucial source of economic data and research for Indian Country. The center's work reveals both the uniqueness of tribal economies and their interconnectedness with regional and national prosperity.
Casey Lozar, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, has served as CICD's director since 2020. Under his leadership, the center has expanded its data tools and research initiatives while navigating the challenges of the pandemic. Lozar brings a perspective shaped by his tribal heritage and years of experience working with Native communities.
Tribal Business News spoke with Lozar about the center's evolution, its growing influence on policy, and the future of economic research in Indian Country.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
The Center for Indian Country Development was started in 2015. When you took over as director in 2020, what had been established by the center's founders, Patrice Kunesh and Sue Woodrow?
I'll start with gratitude. Patrice and Sue developed an important foundation for a new national research and policy institute. They built in key values that we continue to lean into, leveraging the legacy of the Minneapolis Fed's work with tribal communities over the past 40 or 50 years.
Three areas really jumped out when I became director. First is the importance of relationship building. As Native people, we have long memories. Deepening relationships and trust with tribes, tribal organizations, and policy makers is critical to understanding tribal economies.
Second was expanding the body of rigorous research. There's been a long dearth of economic research, both applied and academic, related to issues important to Native people.
Third was ensuring our work aligned with needs in Indian Country and making it accessible. I've prioritized this under my leadership — we don't want to do research that's just interesting. We want it to be accessible to tribal leaders, practitioners, and policymakers across the country. That's why we've created formats ranging from academic journal publications to policy discussion papers, web articles, videos, and social media.
Indian Country has been called the “asterisk nation” due to chronic data gaps. How are you turning those asterisks into actual numbers people can use?
It's hard to influence or inform public policy discussions if there isn't data or high-quality data. Indian Country is still very much invisible in many data sets. We've been called the “asterisk nation” because sample sizes are often too small to provide meaningful data.
Our approach is twofold: creatively tap into existing public data to make it more useful for stakeholders in Indian Country, and build new data sets that help tell the story about economic realities and opportunities in Native communities.
We're developing data tools that equip decision-makers with what they need to make high-quality, data-informed decisions that impact tribal economies.
Talk about how that data works at a practical level. Your research is cited in Senate hearings, academic journals and business media outlets, among other places. How does your work actually shape federal economic policy?
I think at the practical level, the most important element is our process for identifying research projects. We have a team of Native and non-Native professionals with deep history working in Indian Country and lived experiences of coming from these communities. They understand where challenges or barriers exist, or areas where Indian Country is doing really well economically.
One of our primary values is listening directly to Indian Country and to policymakers, which informs the kinds of projects we take on. There are so many unanswered questions that we're constantly prioritizing, focusing on a couple key areas: access to capital and credit for households and businesses, and tribal public finance.
As we conduct research or bring new data tools to the field, we're often asked to share our findings. Center staff are on the conference circuit in Indian Country all the time. Elected leaders and policymakers frequently ask us to preview or demonstrate our data tools so they understand how to use them for policy development.
One of your data tools brings together 14+ sources into user-friendly community profiles. That sounds like economic detective work. How did you piece it together?
Last year we launched the Native Community Data Profiles to bring data front and center for understanding tribal economies and economic experiences in individual Native communities. We asked ourselves: How do we do that in a meaningful way?
We ended up compiling data from 14-plus sources and built a platform with high user accessibility. This allows for an easy experience to tap quickly into data that might have taken tens, if not hundreds, of hours for a Native community to compile on their own. We answered the question of how Native communities are experiencing the economy from a data perspective by using available public data in ways it hasn't been used before.
After five years of churning out research on tribal economies, what blind spots do federal policymakers still have?
American Indian and Alaska Native people make up 2% of the population, so often a deep understanding of Native economies or experiences is lacking because of limited exposure to tribal people, traditions, and economies.
One of our top priorities is ensuring both practitioners in Indian Country and policymakers are aware of our research. There are very few entities doing rigorous economic research on Native communities because we are a small population. It's rare for us to turn down an opportunity to talk about our research.
When I look back on my five years at the center, one area where we've seen a major shift is the significant interest in our research and the number of citations, either in academic journals or Senate hearings. I'm proud of the rigor of our research, and making sure it "hits the streets" gives the center's work legs.
If Jerome Powell called you into his office tomorrow and said, “Casey, tell me one thing I need to understand about tribal economies” — what would it be?
Keeping it at the highest level: data in Indian Country. When I see how we can improve understanding and data-informed policy making, it comes down to addressing data constraints in a meaningful way, while leaning into the important principles of tribal data sovereignty.
In some ways, Indian Country is behind in that we don't have the type of readily available data for our key institutions that other populations have. The emphasis on closing those data gaps will ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of tribal economies and economic outcomes.
You wrote an op-ed last year for Tribal Business News about the Survey of Native Nations, which seems kind of revolutionary — like creating a Census of Governments for tribes 70 years after it started for everyone else. How's that going?
The Survey of Native Nations stemmed from understanding the importance of public finance in healthy economies. Public finance data for other governments is readily available, primarily through the Census Bureau's 70-year-plus Census of Government survey. But tribal governments haven't been invited to the table.
While other government units can understand their public finance and compare it to peer governments, tribal nations haven't been able to do that. From a policymaking perspective, having a deeper understanding of tribal treasuries is critical during times of quick and important policy development, like during the pandemic.
We piloted the survey with tribes in Montana, sought feedback, and made adjustments to our questionnaire. We then built in additional tribal data sovereignty principles in the next round, scaling in partnership with United South and Eastern Tribes Organization and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
We're beginning to analyze and develop comprehensive reports for tribes and to conduct aggregate analysis to understand tribal treasuries. Soon, we'll be announcing that we're taking the Survey of Native Nations national so this tool is available to all tribes, regardless of location.
Where's the money flowing in Indian Country right now? Which economic sectors are growing in importance?
Three jump out particularly in our research: gaming, federal contracting, and the small business sector.
National Indian Gaming Commission data shows continued increase in gross revenues, reaching just under $42 billion last year for the first time ever. Our research on spillover effects of gaming operations showed that when gaming operations reopened after pandemic lockdowns, there was incredible economic activity in the surrounding region.
Federal contracting has experienced the fastest annual growth year-over-year compared to any other industry in Indian Country over the last 10-12 years. That's a net positive for Indian Country from employment and revenue generation perspectives. But we know many Native entities subcontract their work to local, non-Native firms. When Native entities do well in federal contracting, there are spillover effects to the rest of the nation's economy, which highlights the interdependence of tribal and non-tribal economies.
The small business sector has held strong coming out of the pandemic. A positive data point in our Native entrepreneurship dashboard is that the number of self-employed Native workers in businesses with fewer than 10 employees or under age 35 is outpacing national averages. We anticipate Native small businesses will continue to grow and provide economic activity and access to goods and services in tribal communities.
Native CDFIs are filling financial gaps where traditional banks fear to tread. How crucial are they to addressing capital deserts in Indian Country?
Native CDFIs are filling a void in access to capital and credit that has long been a challenge for Indian Country. They have an agile business model, meeting their constituents and customers where they are and providing creative solutions for businesses and households.
Our research shows some of their methods and practices, which are unique compared to traditional financial institutions, are doing pretty amazing things with regards to delivering credit in innovative ways that are community-informed while mitigating loan risk. Healthy Native CDFIs providing credit in our communities is helpful for addressing economic outcomes.
Fast forward to CICD's 20th anniversary. What vision are you laying the groundwork for now?
We're building foundational data sets that can be leveraged for rigorous research, with more data collaborations in Indian Country that adhere to tribal data sovereignty principles. We'll continue maintaining existing data tools while expanding new ones.
We're also working to develop processes that make it easier for consistent economic research across Indian Country. We'll have a piece coming later this year around Native entity identifiers that are important for researchers both within and outside Indian Country to use similar identifiers, which is critical for consistency.
Most importantly, I've seen growing collaboration across Indian Country. I'm heartened by the collective sense of how we support each other within Indian Country, and the growing emphasis on how Indian Country can support the nation.
You see that intersection often at tribal convenings around the country—how we tell our story from an economic perspective and the important contributions of tribes to both regional and national economies. It's been exciting to see Indian Country work together closely, and to see Indian Country become a critical player in the prosperity of the United States.
