THE BUSINESS OF BEING CHEROKEE: AN EXAMINATION OF THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER AND VISION OF SMALL BUSINESSES ON THE QUALLA BOUNDARY OF THE EASTERN BAND OF CHEROKEE INDIANS Courtney Lewis A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Anthropology Chapel Hill 2012 Approved by: Valerie Lambert, PhD James Peacock, PhD Theda Perdue, PhD Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, PhD Michael Lambert, PhD ©2012 Courtney Lewis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT COURTNEY LEWIS: The Business of Being Cherokee: An Examination of the Transformative Power and Vision of Small Businesses on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (Under the direction of Valerie Lambert) This dissertation examines the crucial socio-economic impact of small businesses and small business owners on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. It addresses the questions of how boundaries that Native Nations must work within—land, legal, and representational—impact these small business owners, how these boundaries are transformed, and how these transformations can literally and figuratively alter the landscape of a Native Nation. Within these boundaries, I discuss the EBCI governmental programs initiated specifically to encourage and aid small business owners. I then critically explore the characteristics of these businesses and business owners (products/services offered, education provided through employee training and public information, previous business experience, etc.), as well as how issues of representation and the EBCI’s casino bear upon business ownership. This work furthermore chronicles these businesses’ challenges during the Great Recession, thereby documenting the means by which these critical components of our worldwide economy buttress themselves against economic shocks. Economically, it is the independence and choice provided by small businesses that stabilizes, diversifies, stimulates, and helps sustain the robustness of a Native Nation's economy. This impact suggests that our current lack of information about contemporary Native Nation small businesses has hindered our understandings of not only American Indian iii people as entrepreneurs and small business owners, but also our overall understandings of reservation economies. This research topic was developed in conversation with the EBCI chief, economic development offices, and small business owners. It is based on over fifteen months of participant observation as well as my own experiences as a Cherokee citizen and small business owner. The methodology included networking with small business owners, their customers, and residents in order to select individuals for formal interviews. This was followed by structured and semi-structured interviews and observation of public events which concerned small business owners, such as those hosted by the Chamber of Commerce and the tribal council meetings. This research included conversational analysis via formal data gathering with archival documents, particularly the Cherokee One Feather, regarding small business ownership and activities. This research has been approved by the UNC- Chapel Hill and EBCI IRB offices. iv PREFACE That night was so cold and blustery that every breath cut into your lungs. I hustled across the parking lot and the snow that signaled that a power outage was a real possibility for the weekend. It was a Friday evening. I entered the crowded coffeehouse called Tribal Grounds, shook off the snow, and was immediately enveloped by the warm aroma of coffee and pastries. I had braved the weather to attend a Cherokee language class led by a local high school student who worked at the new children’s Kituwah Immersion Language Academy. He had his sights set on teaching college someday. This was his first foray into formally teaching adults—though he had coached beginners, including me, for years. I skimmed the menu, written in both English and Cherokee syllabary, and ordered an indigenously grown coffee. The beans were hand-roasted by the owner, Natalie, an Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) citizen. While I waited for my order, I chatted with her about an open-mic night for locals that was planned for tomorrow night. I picked up my coffee and clung to it until my fingers regained warmth, then I went into the room for community events and meetings. The walls were covered with bright oil paintings created by a young contemporary Cherokee artist, Joshua L. Adams1(See figure P.1). 1 This installment was, in the artist’s words, “An attempt to establish an appealing relevance to the youth of the Eastern Band of Cherokee….Our community must evolve. We must save that which makes us Cherokee.” v Figure P.1: “Conscious Effort” by Adams. A diverse group of students were already waiting for class to begin: one was a neighboring high school teacher who wanted to make the Cherokee language available to her students; another was a coffee house employee and EBCI citizen who was given the night off to attend the class; and a third was a retired woman, also EBCI, who wanted to become conversational in Cherokee so she could speak with her grandchild in the new EBCI immersion program. As I sat down with them to practice (“Osiyo! Osigwotsu? Osda— nihina?” is heard in a repetitive chorus since we had only covered the basics of conversation), I considered how small businesses like this one—so vital for the economy and the exchange of language, art, and food— had been neglected by academic research (See figures P.2 and P.3). vi Figure P.2: Tribal Grounds coffee house. Figure P.3. A drink at Tribal Grounds coffee house. The problem with the topic of business, like software programming or car maintenance, is that the subject is considered boring by all who are not in the thick of it. It is so ubiquitous in our United States society that it is taken for granted; it is mundane. When you talk about “business” as a concept, what comes to mind is a generic, corporate, large- scale firm made up of black business suits, cubicles, and a fleet of administrative staff. In that vii world, you never truly buy a product from someone—only from something, i.e., the corporate entity. And when you call this entity with a concern or compliment, you are often met with an automated system instead of a person. Small businesses are different and this difference makes them exciting. In a real sense, small businesses are their owners: they are also your neighbors, family, and friends. They sell products you want because you asked for them, not just the same products that get shipped worldwide. They offer the services that are needed in their community because the owners live there and see the specific needs. And small businesses are the force that, by multitudes, drives the economy of every country. The most difficult issue when discussing businesses on reservations with American Indian business owners, in particular, is the nearly inconceivable amount of variation across those reservations and business owners. I could claim that the stereotype so often portrayed in movies and in literature of the reservation’s desolate and barren landscape, dotted by corrugated tin roofed shacks, rusted and dead cars, and the occasional tumbleweed does not exist. But it does—albeit in differing forms—as any report on poverty in the United States will attest to. Alternatively, I could claim that Native Nations2 are struggling every minute of the day to provide for people who live hand-to-mouth. But that also would also not be true because there are Native Nations who are, beyond a doubt, succeeding and continuing to create vital and sustainable economies for their communities. But to focus on either one of these scenarios, or even juggle them together like delicately labeled glass balls (“Poor Reservation,” “Rich Reservation”), would be problematic at best, and would miss the entire point of this research. 2 I choose to use the term “Native Nations” in reference to the federally recognized tribal entities in the United States. Although the U.S. government legally refers to them as “Tribes” I find this term undermines and subjugates the status of these Native Nations, denying, in implication, that they are more than a small gathering of “primitive” peoples instead of the sovereign entities that they are. viii The fact is that small businesses, and the people who own them, exist at every class and wealth level. Of course they appear in different guises—here a business consulting firm, there a one-pump gas station with an attached one room grocery store—but that is the beauty and advantage of small business. By nature, it can be more dexterous and, theoretically, be what you need it to be, at the place you need it to be. The reality, however, is that many small businesses are not allowed to be what they need to be. They are constrained by location, education, discrimination, and plain old issues of capital. These issues are compounded if you are an American Indian business owner and located on a reservation. For most business owners in the United States, if your business faces one of these issues, you have the ability to relocate. There are 3.5 million square miles of land available to find the best place to realize your dream. However, for a citizen of a Native Nation, such as the EBCI3, your choice is limited to the approximately 56,000 acres (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians 2010) of your reservation in order to sustain the business privileges of citizenship in that nation. This dissertation addresses these and other Native Nation-specific perspectives and answers the questions regarding the small businesses impacts for American Indian peoples by unfolding a rich ethnographic study of small business owners and entrepreneurs on the homeland of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in western North Carolina.