Sovereign entrepreneurs : Cherokee small-business owners and the making of economic sovereignty /
Courtney Lewis.
- Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, (c)2019.
- 1 online resource.
- Critical indigeneities .
Includes bibliographies and index.
"Economic identities : conceptions and practices -- Tourism : "Where are the Indians?" -- Bounding American Indian businesses -- Pillars of sovereignty : the case for small businesses in economic development -- Governmental support for Indianpreneurs : challenges and conflicts."
"[A] study of small businesses and small business owners who are members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI). The EBCI has an especially long history of incorporated, citizen-owned businesses located on their reservation. Many people stop with casinos or natural-resource intensive enterprise when they think of Indigenous-owned businesses, but on Qualla Boundary today, Indigenous entrepreneurship and economic independence extends to art galleries, restaurants, a bookstore, a funeral parlor, and more. Lewis's fieldwork followed these businesses before and after the Great Recession, and against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Cherokee-owned casino. From this source base, Lewis reveals how these EBCI businesses have contributed to an economic sovereignty that empowers and sustains their nation both culturally and politically. This is a generative concept that helps to define what a distinctly Indigenous form of entrepreneurship looks like"--
9781469648606 9781469648613
Cherokee business enterprises--North Carolina--Cherokee Indian Reservation. Small business--North Carolina--Cherokee Indian Reservation. Entrepreneurship--North Carolina--Cherokee Indian Reservation. Sovereignty--Economic aspects.