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Beyond Gaming: Tribal business investments reflect diversity
By: Steve Metzer	The Journal Record	January 22, 2020	0
Employees stay busy at Bedré Fine Chocolate in Davis. Owned and operated by the Chickasaw Nation, the 34,000-square-foot facility includes a large manufacturing floor and retail shop. It employs more than 30 people. (Journal Record file photo)
Many people may not fully appreciate the powerful impact that Native American tribes have on the Oklahoma economy, and especially the vitality tribes bring to rural communities, an economist and university professor who has long studied influences of sovereign nations within the state said.
Kyle Dean is the director of the Center for Native American and Urban Studies at Oklahoma City University. He and his colleague, Russell Evans, have studied the rising influence of tribes for more than a decade, preparing numerous reports on economic influences of individual tribes as well as on the combined effects of all 38 federally recognized tribes headquartered in the state.
While tribes might be identified most often with casinos scattered from Quapaw in northeast Oklahoma to Devol in the southwest, they are invested in numerous other industries, from retail to manufacturing to banking and real estate, Dean said, and their business interests have become more diverse in recent years.
"I think the tribes have seen an appreciable increase in non-gaming entities," he said. "Clearly, gaming is a large portion of their revenue, (but) I expect it to continue to shrink over time in terms of overall revenues, because the tribes recognize their need to diversify and they have strong desire to get into other businesses."
Tribes have created jobs related to everything from chocolate making in the town of Davis to ammunition manufacturing in Antlers. According to the professors' most recent report, 34,674 Oklahomans were employed by tribal businesses in 2017. Another 17,000 were employed by tribal governments. In all, the employees earned wages and benefits worth $2.7 billion.
Of course, money earned by people employed by tribal governments or businesses makes it possible for other jobs to be created within their communities. When analyzed in the context of the Oklahoma economy and accounting for "spillover" or "multiplier" impacts, the professors estimate that tribal activities supported 96,177 jobs in the state in 2017, accounting for $4.6 billion in wages and benefits earned by Oklahoma workers.
"If Oklahoma tribes were an industry, they would rank as the 11th largest by employment," their report states. "They would rank as the 9th largest by production."
Dean said studies of the economic impact of tribes on Oklahoma show that it has increased over the past decade. While employment increased by 10.3% between 2010 and 2017, the value of production rose by 20%. In 2010, the total value was estimated at $10.8 billion, and the most recent estimate pegged it at $12.9 billion.
It's important to note, too, that money earned by tribal endeavors typically is plowed back into communities. Scott Meacham, who served as Oklahoma treasurer from 2005 to 2011, said the value of tribal support for things like local road construction and health care clinics would be hard to overestimate.
"A tribe doesn't have shareholders. It invests back in its people, back in its communities, back in its programs," Meacham said. "So you're actually getting a better return."
The positive influence may be most notable in rural communities.
"In terms of importance to their local communities, it's pretty significant," Dean said. "The reality is, they are significant employers in the state and they employ a lot of non-tribal Oklahomans."
The OCU economist cited the Iron Horse Industrial Park in Pottawatomie County, established as a foreign trade zone by the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, as a good example of a tribal investment paying off substantially for a local community. According to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, the park targets industries in the oil and gas, environmental sustainability, automotive and aerospace sectors.
"They are being very creative and trying hard to diversify," Dean said.
Economic impacts of tribes are greatest in eastern Oklahoma, where roots of the state's largest sovereign nations run deep. However, Dean said Oklahoma as a whole benefits from tribal influence, from Tonkawa in Kay County, home of the Tonkawa Tribe, to Concho in Canadian County, home of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, to Carnegie in Caddo County, home of the Kiowa Tribe.
Former Oklahoma Secretary of Native American Affairs Lisa Billy agreed.
"Tribes have been relocated here officially since 1832 (and are) not leaving the state of Oklahoma for better investments," she said. "We all live here. We all work here."
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Oklahoma ranks second only to California in the number of citizens self-identified as Native Americans. The state's Native American population grew from 395,533 in 2000 to 482,760 in 2010, a 22% increase. The increase in Native American population outpaced by more than double the 9% rate of growth of the general population in the state. By 2010, self-identified Native Americans represented 13% of Oklahoma's total population.
Dean, a lifelong Oklahoman, said he didn't fully appreciate himself the importance of tribes to the state's economy until he started studying their impact more than a decade ago.
"I didn't understand the totality of government programs and the totality of their diversified business activities," he said. "From my perspective, I look at these studies as a way to present information to Oklahomans not just as an economic number but more broadly as what it is that tribes do, how they provide dollars for communities, for health care, for schools."
In cooperation with the federal government, Oklahoma tribes spend significant sums on health care, education and transportation to the benefit of all Oklahomans, he said.
While not every tribe in the state has participated in an economic impact study conducted by the OCU professors, many have and their numbers seem to rise with each new study, Dean said, adding that he is confident of conclusions.
"The best we can guarantee is that it's our best attempt at an unbiased estimate," he said. "But if you made me say, I would say (total economic impacts) are underestimated."
Tribal Economic Impact 2020 (Click here to read more stories from this special issue.)
Kyle Dean Lisa Billy Oklahoma Scott Meacham tribes 5:07 pm Wed, January 22, 2020 The Journal Record
Steve Metzer
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