Indigenous entrepreneurs could help New Mexico strengthen its economy, but they face unique hurdles. A potential solution: Hire Indigenous people who could identify funding opportunities and non-financial support to help fellow small business owners grow.
“To build a truly economic and resilient New Mexico, we have to do it bottom up,” Vanessa Roanhorse (Diné) told state lawmakers on the interim Economic and Rural Development and Policy Committee on Wednesday. New Mexico has one of the least diverse economies because of its dependency on oil and gas, said Roanhorse, founder and CEO of Roanhorse Consulting. “Our data shows that long-term stability depends on Indigenous tribal ownership strategies and localized supply chains that keep our local dollars circulating here.”
One challenge for Indigenous entrepreneurs, Roanhorse said, is that homes on land held in trust by the federal government can’t be used as collateral to qualify for start-up loans.
That’s meant to protect tribal sovereignty and the loss of Native lands. If banks could foreclose on and seize tribal trust land, they’d effectively own part of the reservation. But that protection makes it hard for Native would-be small business owners to get traditional lines of credit.
Tribal liaisons can point people to resources that are available, like training and technical assistance.
A three-year pilot program run by UNM Rainforest Innovations — an economic development nonprofit owned by the University of New Mexico Board of Regents — tested the idea and showed promising results, Roanhorse and her co-presenters said.
The idea is that rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, business support in Native communities should be built on trust and an understanding of cultural values that comes along with hiring Native entrepreneurs to help their neighbors.
“It’s not like they were working from a desk and sending emails. They were really out in the communities, working with other entrepreneurs within their communities to help them navigate the process of starting and scaling a business,” program manager Cecilia Becenti said. “Since they themselves were entrepreneurs, they had kind of walked the path before and were able to bring others along with them, share their expertise, build trust.”
The pilot program was paid for by the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021 to help the country recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The funding ended last year, so the group hopes state lawmakers will step in, although they didn’t formally ask for state money. They estimate they’d need $60,000 per tribal liaison, and they recommend five to 10 liaisons, putting the low-end request at $300,000, plus $80,000 for a program manager.
