NCAI webinar highlights toolkit and three animated videos urging tribes to center citizen-owned small businesses

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) held the third webinar in a four-part series to debut an animated three‑part video series and a companion toolkit aimed at helping tribal leaders, practitioners and partners support Native small businesses. The session combined three short videos with a panel discussion featuring tribal practitioners.

The videos, played at the start of the webinar, sketch a broad arc: Video 1 defined a native economy as a culturally grounded, community‑based system of production and exchange that prioritizes recirculating resources and collective roles. Video 2 traced how colonial policies disrupted tribal governance, trade networks and local entrepreneurship, producing long‑term economic leakage and exclusion of native social entrepreneurs. Video 3 offered a menu of roughly 17 strategies that tribal nations are using to rebuild local economies by centering citizen‑owned businesses.

"For Native communities to get back to that place again, they have to consciously work to revive and cultivate businesses owned and operated by their own people," said Dr. Ian Recker, the webinar moderator, summarizing the series' central message. The video series and accompanying "Building Tribal Economies" toolkit were positioned as practical resources for tribal leaders, staff and partner organizations.

Strategies highlighted in the videos and the toolkit include trauma‑informed workforce and entrepreneur supports, codified small‑business development initiatives, procurement preferences for citizen‑owned businesses, streamlined licensing and site leasing, partnerships with tribal colleges and CDFIs, and targeted marketing and certification assistance. The materials also emphasize measuring economic leakage and tailoring procurement and procurement certification to ensure community members can compete for tribal government and tribal enterprise contracts.

NCAI staff said the toolkit was formally released at NCAI's annual convention and that the Building Tribal Economies resource center would be published online soon. The webinar invited questions for two tribal practitioners who then described place‑based implementation examples from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and Akwesasne.