UTE MOUNTAIN UTE RESERVATION, Colorado — The wind whipped dust around Latoya Laner’s face, her hand-beaded earrings swaying as she greeted a semi-truck driver on a sunny autumn afternoon. Late November meant harvest season on the reservation, and the driver offloaded yellow corn kernels, gathered from the nearby fields, into the grain silos before pulling his big rig away.
“That is ours,” said Laner, a Ute Mountain Ute tribal descendant whose father is a member of the tribe. When their products hit the shelves in Colorado and beyond, “everybody who lives here, they do feel a sense of pride about it.”
She works as the production supervisor for Bow & Arrow Brand, a tribal enterprise established in 2017 that specializes in non-GMO products, including blue, yellow and white corn. Laner has watched its commodities sell as far away as New York and California, and she’s even fielded inquiries from abroad.
Although the Utes’ nomadic ancestors traditionally hunted and gathered, their descendants on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation have made a name for themselves in the agriculture industry.
Over the years, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s commercial prowess has strengthened as its ventures gain more notice. The tribe’s Farm and Ranch Enterprise, its agriculture business, has racked up awards, and Bow & Arrow Brand — a separate company under the farm and ranch’s umbrella — has expanded its clientele base and partnered with kitchen favorites like the Barilla pasta company and Colorado’s 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Co., which has bought the tribe’s corn for a decade.
In 2007, nearly 237,000 businesses were owned by Native Americans and Alaska Natives, the U.S. Census Bureau said. By 2021, the number of Indigenous firms had grown to more than 400,000, according to a recent U.S. Small Business Administration summary of census data from that year. They employed over 300,000 people, and the government agency pinpointed their total sales from that year at almost $67 billion.
“In many parts of the country, Tribes are becoming regional economic and political power houses,” the Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development wrote in its tribal business structure handbook. “They are the largest employer in many counties.”
In the southwestern corner of Colorado, both the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Southern Ute Tribe have made strides in tribal business. The Ute Mountain Ute tribal enterprises include a casino and hotel in Towaoc, a construction company and a truck stop, along with the farm and ranch.
The Southern Ute Tribe oversees a casino and resort in Ignacio, an information technology services company, KSUT Public Radio and its Growth Fund, which manages its energy, real estate and private equity portfolio.
From Laner’s perspective, the steps required to launch a tribal business on a reservation can be daunting. In the U.S., tribes are deemed sovereign nations, but the federal government holds the majority of Native American land in trust. The overlaps between tribal, state and federal governments make the task of setting up a firm more complex.
But Laner, 34, is reminded of Bow & Arrow Brand’s worth when other Native Americans use its corn for ceremonial and traditional purposes.
“We’re taking care of each other,” she said. “I would like to see more tribes be able to do that and be self-sustainable. I think that’s a big thing: That is a movement.”
A busy farm, but tribal businesses face hurdles
On the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation in November, the sounds of mooing and stomping echoed from a packed livestock semitrailer as the driver backed up to the pen. Once the rear door opened, dozens of cattle trotted down the wooden shoot, leaving behind a few stragglers in need of extra encouragement.
“These are the future of Farm and Ranch’s herd,” said livestock manager Hardy Tozer, who has worked there for almost two decades.
He was wrapping up the ranch’s fall work: bringing cattle down from the high country, weaning hundreds of calves and performing pregnancy checks on cows.
The 43-year-old, who lives on the south side of Cortez, has known ranching all his life. Although he’s not Ute, his family’s relationship with the tribe has lasted for decades.
“The farm and ranch, and the tribe as a whole, have been wonderful for my whole family — literally, for generations,” Tozer said.
The Ute Mountain Ute Reservation and the neighboring Southern Ute Indian Reservation are the state’s only two federally recognized Native American reservations. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has over 2,000 members, while the Southern Ute Tribe is made up of around 1,400 members, according to their websites. They’re sister tribes, including with the Ute Indian Tribe on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in Utah.
“Native Americans were put on reservations, and this is where the Utes were all separated,” Laner said.
The story of the Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch Enterprise dates back to 1962, when the tribe bought a cattle brand shaped like a bow and arrow. Two decades later, the farm and ranch was set up by the tribal council and given responsibility to care for the cattle.
The 7,700-acre farm predominantly produces alfalfa for hay, runs a cow-calf operation, and grows winter wheat and corn.
“We plant, grow, harvest, mill and package it in one location before it goes out to the consumer,” said Eric Whyte, a tribal member and the hay sales manager.
The farm and ranch employs between 20 and 40 workers, depending on the season. Eight people work for Bow & Arrow Brand — half of whom are tribal members. Tribal leadership declined to provide revenue figures.
“It’s been really successful,” Whyte said, highlighting the farm’s improvements to the region’s water delivery system; those resulted in more jobs and local housing stock. “I wish there would be more tribes that want to be able to do this.”
The trend of Native American tribes forming businesses is taking hold around the country. On the West Coast, the Yurok Tribe manages a number of ventures, including the Yurok Tribe Construction Corp. in Klamath, California, said tribal member and senior fisheries biologist Barry McCovey. The majority of its staff — 90% — is made up of tribal members, McCovey said, and the company works on large-scale restoration projects.
In Montana, the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes run a not-for-profit company, Native Fish Keepers, to catch invasive lake trout in the Flathead Lake — a move to protect its other species. Then they package and sell the fillets.
Chris James, the president and CEO of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, highlighted the 1990s as a “starting point for our tribes, at least in the Lower 48 (states), to really get a kick-start in economic development” through the gaming industry. Some had previously run bingo halls and hosted tourism activities.
Today, significant industries for tribes include government contracting, agriculture and construction, he added. James wants tribes to ask how they can build those business endeavors while creating jobs, leveraging technology, preserving their culture and engaging with their communities.
“That is such a great power of sovereignty for a tribe to create their own system, their own businesses, their own licenses,” said James, a tribal descendant of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “A tribal business supports the people — that’s really what it is.”
But these businesses still face hurdles.
Indigenous people must answer an overarching question: “Do we want to commodify our foods?” said Jill Falcon Ramaker, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Anishinaabe, during a recent workshop about Indigenous issues for journalists in the U.S. and Canada.
If they decide that answer is yes, then “there are huge challenges to gaining the capital, to getting to a place where you can market and distribute,” Ramaker said.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis — which houses the Center for Indian Country Development — Native-owned employers struggled with the rising prices of goods and services, operating expenses and credit availability more than non-Native-owned employers in 2022.
Lower credit scores “disproportionately present challenges in access to financing for Native-owned small businesses,” the bank’s researchers wrote in an article this year. They identified the physical distance between reservations and financial institutions as another potential problem in accessing credit.
“Why would you trust anybody else?”
The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s agriculture enterprises have largely risen above such pitfalls. When orders of yellow corn leave Bow & Arrow’s facility, a regular delivery stop is hundreds of miles away at 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Co., a Colorado company with a distillery in Gypsum and a tasting room in Vail.
Founder Ryan Thompson has relied on Bow & Arrow since his company launched in 2014. His team uses 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of grain each week, and “all of our grain comes from them,” said director of communications Melissa Friel.
10th Mountain — named after the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, once based out of Camp Hale — produces bourbon, whiskey, potato vodka and more. Its moonshine is made of 100% corn. Friel said a floating idea is to make a spirit out of Bow & Arrow’s blue corn, too.
“The quality of the corn that the Ute Tribe produced was higher in sugar content, and it’s just better corn,” Friel said.
She says her company is also motivated by concerns about climate change and a sense of environmental responsibility. She referred to Bow & Arrow as “the best in the industry at that.”
“Native Americans have been growing grain for hundreds of years,” Friel said. “Why would you trust anybody else?”
Looking to the the farm and ranch’s future, Whyte, 61, hopes to recruit more youth who are tech-savvy to keep operations running smoothly. “We’re a little bit older school,” he said. But “you see that benefit of the technology.”
At the Bow & Arrow corn mill, Aarion Eyetoo, 35, pointed out bags of products like polenta that had been processed by machinery in the three-story facility. An employee since 2019, the Towaoc resident worked his way up from manual labor to quality control manager.
“A lot of people don’t know that this is back here, where this product gets shipped to, what it’s used for,” Eyetoo said.
Nearby, inside the Farm and Ranch Enterprise building, Chantell Eyetoo darted out of her office intermittently to chat with the truck drivers rolling up outside.
“It’s quite busy year-round,” she said.
Eyetoo, Aarion’s sister, has lived on the reservation for most of her life, inheriting her home from her late grandmother. Her father is a tribal member, and her mother is Navajo and Goshute.
Eyetoo, 34, started as the farm and ranch’s front desk receptionist in 2016 before transitioning to office manager.
“The good thing with these companies, which I really enjoy, is that they allow you to grow within the company,” Eyetoo said. “So if that is a want or desire that any of the younger generation wants for themselves, they’re more than willing to help you get there.”
Sometimes, she watches her youngest son gawk at her workplace’s combine harvesters.
“I hope that we’re leaving a footprint,” Eyetoo said, “especially for the future generation of this tribe.”
