Honor the treaties. These three words are on posters in tribal offices, on the side of buildings throughout Indian Country in the form of street art, on the backs of Indian people thanks to Steven Paul Judd and others that have printed the words on T-shirts so that we can make simultaneous political and fashion statements, and most importantly these words, honor the treaties, are in the forefront of our thinking given the new Federal policies.

Let’s be clear, we’ve seen this before. The dog whistle may have a more fevered pitch, but we’ve been through this before and each time we’ve persevered as people because the generations before us were able to lead us through the changing environment. From small pivots to bold shifts, our elders navigated the policy landscape and steered us to survival and eventually to a place where we can thrive.

This place, this platform we’ve built through Indian Gaming and self-determination that has amplified our ability to create a vibrant middle-class in Indian Country, is undeniably under attack. The time for pivots and bold shifts is upon us once again. We need to reduce our reliance on the federal government by recommitting and by doubling down on building and expanding our own tribal economies. I believe there are three pillars for tribal economic sovereignty: Iron-clad Governance, Diversified Business Portfolios, and Capacity Building.

The Economic Sovereignty Triangle Governance

To accelerate the growth of our economies we will need to attract outside capital. Our businesses and institutions need to reflect the principles of strong corporate governance. Smart money follows smart governance. Period. Investors need certainty more than they need opportunity. I’ve consulted with hundreds of businesses, and none—zero—put capital into jurisdictions where the rules change with political winds. This isn’t optional; it’s table stakes. Aspects to consider include the following:

• Transparency and Stability: Investors are going to want clear, consistent tax, regulatory, and contract enforcement policies. These reduce uncertainty and perceived risk.
• Separation of Politics from Business: Investors do not want the strategy and focus of a company to change with the political winds. They want professional management that is not hampered by bureaucracy and instability.
• Defined Business Structures: Tribes may use entities like tribally chartered corporations, state LLCs, or section 17 corporations for example. Clear laws and bodies around business structures can provide tax advantages while ensuring clear operational guidelines for businesses.
• Access to Investment-ready Projects: Investors require projects with well-developed plans, proper appraisals, and demonstrated capacity to execute. Communities that address limited infrastructure, leadership capacity, and project scale can improve the prospects of successful ventures.
• Alignment with Long-term Goals: Governance should align investment projects with community priorities such as economic self-sufficiency, sustainability, and job creation as opposed to short-term goals or campaign promises.
• Disclosure Standards: Tribes can improve access to capital by adopting stringent disclosure policies such as creating corporate websites for discoverable data and information or voluntarily sharing financial and operational information.

All these aspects are going to exist on a continuum within each tribal nation as either a small pivot or a bold shift. No matter where you fall, advancing these aspects will help create an environment where investors feel secure in deploying capital while respecting community sovereignty and goals.

Diversified Portfolio of Businesses

Do you remember Blockbuster? When I was growing up every Friday evening, we would wait around the living room in anticipation of my dad coming home from work. He would be coming from St. Cloud, Minnesota, the nearest “big town” to our reservation. St. Cloud was big enough to have a Wal-Mart and big enough to have a Blockbuster. My dad would walk in with a couple of pizzas, some snacks, and a bag of videos. James Bond flicks, new releases, and classic films. It was a great time.

Blockbuster was a good company and a great brand…until it wasn’t. In 2005 it was on top of the world, the only game in town. And then big tech, namely Netflix (who wasn’t that big yet), wiped it out and made it irrelevant. We’re in the middle of this very story in Indian Gaming. Big tech, namely Fan Duel and Draft Kings, are coming to eat our lunch and, in many cases, we’re letting them straight in through the front door and letting them sit at the head of our tables. It’s still a long play for them, the next decade or so, but let’s not kid ourselves.

There are other attacks. State legislatures, billionaires, and state agencies are looking in our direction for tax revenue and market destruction. The Adelson family isn’t just trying to destroy the Dallas Maverick’s basketball team, they are also at the Texas state legislature trying to dictate the fate of many Indian people near their borders. In Minnesota, the state’s racing commission expanded gaming without the state legislature, citizen support, or the governor by allowing the state’s racetracks to install slot machines in their card rooms. No laws. No public discourse. No regard for what Indian Gaming means to the broader, mostly rural, economy of the state. Just a board of anti-Indians making decisions that will damage countless lives, Indian and non-Indian.

I tell this tale because I don’t want us to become Blockbuster. I don’t want us to miss the opportunity to pivot, to become irrelevant, to be disintermediated, to disappear.

The pivot we need to make alongside our continued vigilance in protecting Indian Gaming and running world-class facilities is to expand our possibilities. We need to morph from regional gaming traffic generators to regional tourism drivers, healthcare providers, cannabis cultivators, industrial creators, entertainment districts, government contractors, real estate developers, childcare creators, and on and on and on. We need to start more ventures, buy more businesses, and inspire more entrepreneurial capacity.

Nothing. Let me repeat. Nothing is going to produce the way gaming does, and we can’t let that deter us. Our metrics should evolve from how much distribution we are generating for our tribes to how much of the gross domestic product in our region we are responsible for. A long-term, sustainable economy requires control of production. The goods and services needed in our regions need to be controlled by us.

Capacity Building

When I grew up, I would frequently go to my grandmother’s house to hang out. There were two things I knew for certain when I would go there; there would be a hot meal to eat and there would be a tremendous amount of love shared throughout the house. Because of that, my grandma’s house was the catchall for just about everybody loosely related to us. Aunties, uncles, cousins, friends claiming they were cousins. Everybody loved my grandma’s house.

The certainty of that place. The stability of the love that would be there when you walked in. That is the very essence of capacity building in a strong tribal economy. A quality, affordable, sustainable, and predictable place to call home. We needed them then and we need them now. So does our workforce.

Without proper housing infrastructure we’ll continue to see struggling labor forces and poor labor participation. Improving housing will improve our capacity to accelerate the growth of our economies.

We also need to make a bold investment in education to increase the skills of our community members. Education is the most effective lubricant for upward mobility. We’re going to get the leadership we deserve in our companies, governments, and institutions. If the vision is still to have intelligent, ethical, and energetic leadership running our tribes, businesses, and key departments it will be up to us to create that intelligence. Nobody is going to do it for us, we must do it for ourselves. Investing in and being creative about upskilling our citizens is crucial.

The Bottom Line

The message couldn’t be clearer: In the changing Federal landscape, tribal nations face a binary choice — build economic independence or watch sovereignty slowly suffocate under the weight of dependency.

As Chairman W. Ron Allen put it to me a few weeks ago, “if we say we are governments then act like governments!” The tribes that will thrive in this environment aren’t those waiting for federal cavalry to arrive. They’re the ones building their own armies.

Economic self-determination isn’t just good policy; it’s the only policy with a future. The federal-dependency model is terminally ill, and no amount of political optimism will resurrect it. Tribes can either design their economic future or have it designed for them.

Life, business, and tribal sovereignty all follow the same rule: adapt or die. The clock is ticking, and in the immortal words of Darwin, it’s not the strongest or most intelligent that survives, but those most responsive to change. For tribal nations in 2025, economic adaptation isn’t just a strategy—it’s survival itself.

Written By Joe Nayquonabe