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Opening a business can be a challenge for even the most privileged of people.
One operation in Rapid City wants to help level the playing field for people from all backgrounds, as SDPB’s C.J. Keene reports.
The Black Hills Community Loan Fund is a Native community development financial institution (CDFI) aiming to help provide financial opportunities to the historically underserved local Native community.
Barbara Schmitt is the executive director. She says real change comes to communities when economic development is put into local hands.
“We recently had a market study done on the He Sapa (Black Hills) region, and it showed the definite need for loan products as well as technical assistance to assist individuals pursuing business opportunities. Starting up businesses, expanding businesses, and by us providing those technical assistance and loan products to those individuals, they’re able to increase their quality of life.”
Schmitt says Native-owned businesses can take advantage of the tourism and arts markets in Rapid City, but the challenge often comes in establishing the groundwork. And that’s where the Community Loan Fund steps in.
However, there are some requirements for people looking to get involved with the program.
“We provide financial literacy training on an as-needed basis and we’re trying to get a schedule twice a month. They’re six-hour courses, we start from business 101, we do banking, setting up a budget – everything individuals will need to further their life. Financial literacy is key, and it is also a requirement for any of our loans we provide.”
Statistics from the US Small Business Administration deputy administrator Diliwar Syed show of the 33 million small businesses with employees nationwide – only 48,000 are Native-owned.
Parts of three families pictured here were forced to abandon their homes in Burt Lake, prodded by the armed deputies of Cheboygan County in 1900. (Courtesy Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians)
The Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians have preserved the tribe’s history in northern Michigan with a new book.
That history includes the violent colonization of Band’s village in the year 1900 and the legal battles that persist to this day.
Interlochen Public Radio’s Michael Livingston was shown around what used to be “Indian Village” and spoke with the tribes’ historian who helped compile the book, A Cloud Over the Land.
On the top of a hill, overlooking an icy Burt Lake, Ken Parkie walks through a small cemetery filled with a few dozen white crosses.
He scans the land, looking for signs of an old settlement.
“I was always told it was down in that area. Right down in there. Yeah, about where that valley is, back that way. That’s where I was always told it was at.”
The historic St. Mary’s Cemetery is located off of Chickagami Trail in Brutus, not far from where the Burt Lake Band’s village stood before the 1900 burnout. (Courtesy IPR)
Several of Parkie’s ancestors are buried here. Some lived in that original settlement that stood here more than a century ago.
Back then, the village had log cabins made with lumber from a nearby sawmill and was a thriving community.
Then came October 15, 1900, when a group of men including a sheriff and land speculator burned the village down with kerosene.
The book A Cloud Over the Land tells the story about how the Burt Lake Band lost their land, but also about the fight to get it back.
Even now, the band is trying to obtain federal reaffirmation, which would return the label of sovereign nation to the Northwest Peninsula on Burt Lake.
Tribal historian Deborah Richmond says she hopes the book will remind the region and the country that the Band still remains.
“Only now when we can tell our own story, and when people can hear our story, are we allowed to start healing. We would like to focus on the good parts of our culture. But it very much is a cloud over our families and over our history because we want to right the wrongs that happened to our ancestors.”
A Cloud Over the Land is available to purchase on the Burt Lake Band website.
Richmond says the book has already sold over 500 copies.
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