Friday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrates the grand opening of a new entrepreneurial hub and community center in Navajo’s Tuba City. It is run by Change Labs, a Navajo-led non-profit organization. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny spoke to Executive Director Heather Fleming about how it supports the vision of Native American-owned businesses and Native American entrepreneurship.
Tell us briefly what Change Labs is and what your vision is.
Change Labs is a native-led, native-controlled non-profit organization. What we do is provide entrepreneurship support to Native American small businesses, entrepreneurs, artisans, vendors, and more. So we exist to help people get from an idea, ideally to something like the one we’ve established right now: a physical place where they can run their business in the nation. .
Tell us about this brand new physical space. First, does this building have a name? What do you call it?
We call it Entrepreneurship Hub or E-ship Hub. And really, we want to create an E-ship hub for the entire Navajo Nation … where people can go if they have a question about a business, how they pay their taxes, how they differ from a non-profit, etc. Structure or LLC, which one makes more sense to me at the moment of need, they need to travel off the reservation to answer those kinds of questions.
What resources will you find when you enter this building?
As soon as you enter the building, you’ll be greeted by your colleague Raquel Black… She helps you sign up for one-on-one coaching her sessions when you have a very specific issue you want to talk to someone about. We can also point you to some of the resources we have, such as free Wi-Fi, color printing, and all sorts of great amenities in this space. It sounds small, but again, many of the entrepreneurs we serve run their businesses from home. They report that they often do not have a dedicated space in their home to work. For some people, even getting access to a printer is a challenge.
Tell us about the businesses Change Labs has helped grow over the past few years.
This task is really challenging. It’s a long dusty bumpy Lez road. I think it’s the entrepreneurs we work with who really inspire us and remind us why we do what we do…. This Saturday, we are graduating from his group of 11 entrepreneurs… One of the guys that stands out to me is Albert Husky. He is working on an app that will help people identify their clan and identify their relationships with each other…. There’s also Carlos Deal from AlterNativeEats. Oh, Navajo sushi exists! and he is the master.
What is your vision for the future of this space? What are your expectations? Best case scenario, what would this be?
I think there is a movement in tribal communities across the country right now to support entrepreneurs. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a native entrepreneurial spirit. For a long time, even in our Navajo community, we feel that this is not a word people use or take much pride in. I have spoken many times about the lack of direct words and words in the Navajo language. Entrepreneurship and business concept. I think that’s part of the challenge, when we talk about these things, we talk about it in context — it’s something we borrow from another culture… Natives were entrepreneurs long before Christopher Columbus and crew appeared in the United States of today. So we feel like we’re on the cusp of some kind of revitalization, and that’s really exciting.
Heather Fleming, thank you so much for speaking with us.
Thank you for inviting me.
The Entrepreneurship Hub ribbon-cutting ceremony will begin at 10am local time on Friday next to the Tuba City Chapterhouse. Learn more about.
