A popular native activist tee-shirt depicts four American Indian veterans of the resistance wars in the American West carrying muskets, with the caption, “Tell us again, who’s an illegal immigrant?” Proposing a focus of more research on tribal enterprise, this paper argues that some of the obstructions to a unified study of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship have already been addressed by tribal enterprise scholars and practitioners (Cornell & Kalt 1998, Jorgensen & Taylor 2005, White 1990). These tribal enterprise participants may very well be looking at our research on social enterprise and thinking, “Tell us again, what’s a social enterprise?” Many North American tribal nations have been using social enterprise with wide variation in missions, legal environments, and economic environments for decades, if not centuries (White 1990). As social enterprises wrestle with how to work with cash-strapped governments and nonprofits to achieve larger social aims, tribal enterprises work within tribal nations to generate income for social services, jobs and training, and flourishing economic zones. Meager income may surprise some municipal governments and nonprofits adopting social enterprise models, but findings from tribal enterprise research indicate significant income is uncommon, while social purposes like creating jobs, promoting trade, and strengthening political sovereignty are more realistic goals (Cornell & Kalt 1998). Scholars struggle to define the field of social enterprise and entrepreneurship (Light 2008), but focus on the tribal enterprise first and entrepreneurship only within that context has created a foundation for scholars to understand and compare tribal entrepreneurs across organizations, thereby understanding both tribal enterprise and tribal entrepreneurship better.
A tribal enterprise (TE) is an organization that uses market mechanisms to achieve missions aimed at addressing tribal needs (Cornell & Kalt 1998). There are three reasons why research into TE is well-defined relative to SE. The first is that tribal nations help determine the missions of tribal enterprise, so it is easier to discern whether the organization is attempting to achieve a tribal mission (Smith 2000).
The second reason that TE is useful for research is the natural experiment ongoing at the 566 Tribal Nations in North America. In these hundreds of nations, literally thousands of TEs have failed, succeeded, or both, and scholars of TE have found clear lessons can be derived from these quasi-experiments (see, for example, Harvey, 1996, White 1990, and Garsombke & Garsombke 2000). Most significantly, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development has been able to use this rich diversity in national legal structures, institutions, and corporate forms to make recommendations for TE, most of which apply to SE almost without modification (Cornell & Kalt 1998).
Still another reason that the field of TE is relatively well-defined is because it is not confined by cultural imperial assumptions in the same way as SE scholarship. SE literature is rich with questions derived from empirical study and theoretical research on SEs (Light 2008), but it is difficult to compare similar organizations in other contexts such as SE in the global south, North American TE or indigenous enterprise across the globe (Kerlin 2009). While unanswered questions are the hallmark of scientific inquiry, placing arbitrary cultural/racial limitations on resources used to answer those questions limits science, and brings up troubling normative concerns. This paper is an attempt to begin to correct this incomplete and somewhat errant epistemology (Sullivan & Tuana 2007).
Cornell, S., & Kalt, J. P. (1998). Sovereignty and nation-building: the development challenge in Indian country today. American Indian Culture and Research, 22(3), 187–214.
Garsombke, D. J., & Garsombke, T. W. (2000). Non-traditional vs. traditional entrepreneurs: emergence of a Native American comparative profile of characteristics and barriers. Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal, 6(1), 93–100.
Harvey, S. (1996). Two models to sovereignty: a comparative history of the Nashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Navajo Nation. Native American Culture and Research Journal, 20(1), 147–195.
Jorgensen, M., & Taylor, J. (2005). What determines indian economic success? Evidence from tribal and individual indian enterprises. Cambridge, MA.
Kerlin, J. A. (2009). Social enterprise: A global comparison. Medford, MA: Tufts University Press.
Light, P. C. (2008). The Search for Social Entrepreneurship. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Smith, D. H. (2000). Modern tribal development: Paths to self-sufficiency and cultural integrity in Indian Country. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira.
Sullivan, S., & Tuana, N. (2007). Race and epistemologies of ignorance. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
White, R. H. (1990). Tribal assets: The rebirth of Native America. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
1. Concepts and models of social enterprise worldwide
