Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 1, 1 Ianuali 1995 — 17 million acres of reservation anel not one ATM [ARTICLE]

17 million acres of reservation anel not one ATM

Most of us ean access ATMs - tho.se handy cash machines - anywhere, any time. To Rodger Boyd, executive director of eeonomie development for the Navajo Nation, their absence symbolized the financial industry's indifference to the Navaj6 people. Their absence until a year aeo

that is, when Norwest Bank was poised to take over City Bank, the only bank on the reservation. "They were going to walk away and they hadn't done anything for us," said Boyd. "They had a miserable record of lending.

People had to drive hundreds of miles to get to a bank. How ean entrepreneurship survive like that?" The Navajo Nation filed a letter of protest on the takeover and made the system work for them. Norwest filed a letter of commitment to provide $80 million over 10 years for small business, consumer and mortgage loans and to provide scholarship assistance. Norwest also promised to increase access. They will not only build additional branches throughout the reservation and refurbish the existing ones: More importantly, they will train Navajos to manage and work at the banks. According to Boyd, this is just one element of the Navajo's long-term eeonomie plan to keep their money in the nation, instead of

pouring it into border towns at the rate of a bi 1 lion dollars a year. Their development strategy focuses on vertical integration: ensuring that the profits made at every marketing step, front raw product to by-product, stay on the res. And they are talking self-sus-tained eeonomie development in a big way.

In the last tew years, the Navajo nation has built nine shopping centers, using their funds and assistance from the federal Eeonomie Development Administration. This provides retail outlets as well as creates job. They are

developing a cooperative farm with 60,000 acres currently under irrigation and an additional 50,000 acres planned. Harvesting and marketing of forest products and traditional arts and crafts enterprises are also in the works. Boyd figures the nation's biggest eeonomie eoup will be the Navajo Oil and Gas Corporation. Although tribes retain the mineral rights on the reservation, Navajos had been leasing out their oil, gas and eoal resources. Rather than ship the raw product out. Boyd says, "we'll be taking our own resource, refining it and bringing it back to sell at a lower pniee, but one where the nation still makes a profit. At eaeh step the tribe benefits." EB

"People had to drive hundreds of miles to get to a bank. How ean entrepreneurship survive like that?" - Roger Boyd