By Robert Miller

1. CREATING INDIGENOUS ECONOMIES AND
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
Professor Robert Miller
Lewis & Clark Law School
Portland, Oregon
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2. Traditional American Indian property
regimes & rights
• Successfully supported for centuries with
agriculture & hunting & fishing
• Private & community property rights
• Trade networks & economic systems
• Intellectual property rights
• Self-sufficiency is self-determination
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3. Euro-American impacts
• Land dispossession
• Dependency theory
• U.S. legal claims –Discovery Doctrine
• U.S. constitution, laws, treaties
• Removal, Reservation, Allotment, Termination
eras
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4. BUSINESS OWNERSHIP PER CAPITA
BUSINESSES PER THOUSAND POPULATION
STATE OF OREGON
90 81.8
80
70
56.96
WHITE
60
50 BLACK
40 HISPANIC
28.37
30
ASIAN/PI
27.86 14.3
20
NATIVE
10 AMERICAN
0
RATE/1,000
Source: 1992 Census of Business
© ONABEN 1997

5. COMMUNITY EFFECTS
• Poverty-related education, economic,
social & health issues
• Community cohesion
• Family stability
• Long term perspective
• Self-Determination

6. Community Benefits
• EARNED INCOME
• CONTAINING “LEAKAGE”
• EMPLOYMENT and TRAINING
• INFLUENCE

7. Onaben’s conclusions
• Small business ownership is a critical element in
community stability
• Small business ownership is unequally distributed
• Everyone benefits from equality of ownership
• Creating business ownership depends on thoughtful
adaptations of prevailing models
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8. Self-Determination and effective
governance creates
environments in which
individuals (tribal citizens &
others) will invest time, energy,
ideas, & money.

9. What does effective governance involve?
Stability in the rules & laws
Separation of politics from business management
Effective and non-politicized dispute resolution
A bureaucracy that can get things done

10. Economic development obstacles
• Attracting investments $$, time and laws
• Rural areas
• Land in “trust” & federal approvals
• Credit & potential
• Tribal courts & U.S. & tribal bureaucracies
• Sovereign immunity
• Political instability
• Economic education & experience
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11. Potential
• Poverty is not an Indian cultural trait
• Improved education & health levels
• Tribal gov’ts – to assist & be clients – “Buy
Indian Acts”
• Onaben, 4 Bands Comm. Fund, Lakota Fund
• U.S. government – Buy Indian Act (1910).
• Multiplier effect & stop “leakage” (Montana
tribal study)
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12. U.S. “Buy Indian” Act – 25 USC 47
• 1910- “That so far as may be practicable
Indian labor shall be employed, and purchases
of the products of Indian industry may be
made in the open market in the discretion of
the Secretary of the Interior.”
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14. Contact
• Rmiller@lclark.edu
• Onaben.org
• My papers -http://ssrn.com/author=354803
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