- Details
- By Tribal Business News Staff
- Economic Development
A new analysis from the Center for Indian Country Development, a research unit of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, shows tribes with gaming and federal contracting operations tend to own larger business portfolios than those without those revenue streams. At the same time, most tribally owned businesses are now concentrated outside those sectors.
The report draws on the Native Entity Enterprises Dataset, which identified 4,096 active businesses owned by 330 federally recognized tribes in 2021. More than four out of five tribes — 82.4% — participated in gaming, federal contracting or both.
Ownership is concentrated among those active in both gaming and federal contracting, which accounted for 75.2% of all identified businesses, while those in neither sector operated just 4%.
Even with that concentration of ownership, most tribal enterprises are not tied to those core industries. About 69.7% of tribally owned businesses operate in other sectors, including health care, education, professional services and transportation.
For tribal leaders and enterprise executives, the data points to a familiar playbook: use gaming and federal contracting to generate revenue and build capacity, then expand into other industries to diversify income and reduce exposure to sector-specific downturns.
The Center for Indian Country Development conducts research on Native economies as part of the Minneapolis Fed’s community development work.
