When his peers in the Native American
Finance Officers Association honored Joe Nayquonabe, Jr. this spring
as their Executive of the Year, attention was given to the progress
the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is making in diversifying its
investments and business enterprises.
Nayquonabe is Commissioner of
Corporate Affairs for the Band and is chief executive officer of
Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures (MLCV), the Band’s business
investment arm that operates like a holding company with management
responsibilities.
MLCV now has more than 35 different
business entities. Together with the Band’s government and earlier
investments in enterprises, the Mille Lacs Band is responsible for
creating more than 3,500 jobs on and off the reservation.
The two anchors of the Band’s
enterprises at the reservation, Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand
Casino Hinckley, have 2,648 employees while non-gaming businesses
located there have 225 employees. Other businesses are scattered
around neighboring communities in East-Central Minnesota, in the Twin
Cities metro area and now include a hotel in Oklahoma City.
The Mille Lacs Band entered the gaming
business 24 years ago. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) then listed
reservation unemployment at a staggering 80 percent. The Band now
assesses its unemployment rate at 14 percent, a rate derived from
knowing who is still in need of a job. That is a more simple,
accurate but unofficial formula than methods used by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics to measure unemployment for states, counties and
cities.
“We are continually evaluating
opportunities and looking for the next potential deal,” Nayquonabe
said. No new deals are imminent, he added, “but I can share that we
have our eye on a few properties throughout the country that would
possibly make nice additions to our portfolio.”
Diversification was a stated goal at
Mille Lacs when Band chief executive Melanie Benjamin named
Nayquonabe to the commissioner’s post three years ago. With
acquisitions and business expansions along the way, Mille Lacs
leaders have insisted that gaming revenue is flattening out. Future
economic growth must come from non-gaming enterprises.
The gaming industry has become “more
competitive” throughout the country, Dawson Her Many Horses, a
NAFOA board member from Las Vegas and a vice president for global
commercial banking for Bank of America Merrill Lynch said. This makes
the diversification efforts by Nayquonabe and other tribal financial
officers in Indian country “critically important to the communities
they serve,” he said.
For those reasons, selecting a NAFOA
Executive of the Year is becoming more difficult, Her Many Horses
said, because “a lot of great people” in leadership are working
to ensure tribally owned enterprises are successful and have a
positive impact on their communities.
What Mille Lacs is achieving, however,
is like a textbook case study for community development.
Business school professors,
philosophers and social responsibility advocates around the world
constantly ponder ways to align social development goals with
economic development. From this has emerged what is broadly called
stakeholder theory, a theory that a business has shareholders
(owners) and stakeholders (the customers, suppliers, employees and
other people sharing community interests) in the well-being of the
firm.
“I never lose sight of why we do
what we do,” Nayquonabe said. “Our business enterprise is for the
benefit of our Band members that include both the profits we make as
a business as well as the jobs we create and the benefits they
provide.”
This combining of shareholder and
stakeholder interests guides the business expansion and
diversification activities. MLCV is building on the hospitality
industry talents and knowledge Mille Lacs members and employees have
gained from their casino resorts. Other businesses are also
extensions of these enterprises and provide services for gaming,
marketing and “ancillary service investments within the Districts
of the Mille Lacs Band Reservation,” he said.
As a result, MLCV is now the largest
hotel operator in St. Paul, has acquired the Embassy Suites in
Oklahoma City, operates a golf course, and in May it reopened the
newly renovated Eddy’s Resort on Lake Mille Lacs.
U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan, from the
surrounding Eighth Congressional District of Minnesota, was present
on May 5 at Eddy’s grand opening. At that gathering, National
Indian Gaming Association chairman Ernie Stevens Jr. presented an
award to Benjamin and Nayquonabe for their work in extending the
Band’s self-sufficiency.
Away from the hospitality industry,
MLCV has acquired and expanded businesses that provide essential
services for the Band, its businesses, and its members. These include
close to home retail shops, such as gas stations and convenience
stores; a movie theater, grocery store, a printing firm (Sweetgrass
Media), and the nonprofit ML Wastewater Management water treatment
plant that serves more than 10,000 people in the Lake Mille Lacs
area.
MLCV doesn’t currently have
financial programs that support individual entrepreneurs in starting
businesses. But it does help independently operating Band members
through business ties that continue to align community stakeholder
interests.
A case in point is Chad German, a Band
member who owns Red Circle Advertising Agency in Minneapolis. Now in
business for 14 years, Red Circle specialized in promoting casinos
exclusively for its first12 years. The agency’s 40 employees are
expanding and diversifying to serve other accounts, German said,
although Indian tribes and casinos still account for 95 percent of
the business.
Like Nayquonabe, German worked as a
summer intern at the Mille Lacs casinos when he was an undergraduate
student at St. Cloud State University. He became advertising manager
for Grand Casino Hinckley after graduate school and before going off
to start Red Circle.
“We currently have more than 20
Indian casinos as clients, all over the country,” he said. During
its history, Red Circle has served 85 different Indian casinos. The
Mille Lacs Band was German’s first client; the casinos remain
clients.
While working with tribes across the
land, German said, he’s come to think of Indian communities as
families. “What wealthy families do with their dollars is leverage
them to make even more money.
“That money can work for you or just
sit in a bank,” he added. “Joe has taken us (the Mille Lacs Band)
to the next level and is leveraging our money like wealthy families.”
PHOTO: Eddy‘s Resort on Lake Mille Lacs had
its grand opening on May 5 at which MLVC’s Joe Nayquonabe, left, and
Band chief executive Melanie Benjamin (second from left) were
presented an award from National Indian Gaming Association chairman
Ernie Stevens Jr. (center) for extending the Band’s self-sufficiency.
Joining them were Congressman Rick Nolan and Scott Vele, executive
director of the Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes (right).
(Courtesy photo)