Business incubator helps entrepreneurs lift up their communities
Tuba City, Navajo Nation (AZ) -- Creating opportunities for success in local tribal communities is what the Business Incubator at Change Labs strives for and with its new cohort of twelve Indigenous entrepreneurs, the incubator is seeing a new wave of ideas targeting the community success and wellbeing.
When it comes to rebuilding a relationship with traditional foods, Bidii Baby Foods, recently accepted into the business incubator program, is taking Navajo dried steam corn and milling it into a cereal to make it baby friendly. The business is located in Shiprock, New Mexico and is owned by Zacharia Ben.
“For myself, I’ve been farming for six generations now and my son is going to be the seventh generation,” he said.
Ben and his wife were inspired to create a business dedicated to feeding and exposing Navajo youth to traditional food after the birth of their son.
“We believe that there is a direct connection between nurturing our land and nurturing our children,” Ben said.
The business is also focused on sharing that experience with the community.
“We’re sharing that food culture, we’re sharing the farm culture and we’re giving people that access to nutritional knowledge and wisdom,” he said. “So, with that comes empowerment, with that comes growth, with that comes healing and then we begin to thrive into the future together.”
Although Bidii Baby Foods was already established before joining the incubator, Ben said Change Labs is helping them figure out the other sides of the business.
“Through this incubator, it will help us to navigate the taxes, it will help us to navigate setting up policy and procedures. As agriculture producers, this will help us establish or continue our operation and maintenance for our equipment,” he said, adding the incubator also helps them navigate Indigenous Entrepreneurship.”
Ben said he’s seen other family run agricultural operations not take the next step to become a business because of the barriers of taxes, paperwork and politics.
“So, because of that, our people turn the other way and they’d rather have a cash flow or donate to ceremonies or just produce purely for their own family,” he said.
Ben wants Bidii Baby Foods to be a role model for other Navajo run agricultural operations and he wants to bring the community along with him on his journey through the fields.
But for Duane Humeyestewa, also accepted into the program, his focus is on the artists in his community.
He grew up in the village of Mishongnovi on Second Mesa in northern Arizona and saw the struggle his family and locals faced as artists.
“I always recognized a wide gap and disparity in how many of our super talented native artists in our tribal communities would not get the most optimal deal for their hard work and efforts when selling their crafts and creations,” he said. “Witnessing my own parents, and other relatives, face some challenging moments trying to sell their crafts served as a catalyst for pursuing this idea that I am currently developing through the Change Labs Incubator program.”
While he isn’t ready to share the name of his business yet, his concept is to create an Indigenous Tribal Community centered marketplace. The marketplace would function on a virtual platform and would be web/app based. By being virtual, the seller and buyer would easily have access to each other and this would make it easier for the seller to generate revenue.
This type of marketplace would also make the artists work accessible to a world wide audience. Which Humeyestewa feels would bring bigger opportunities to local artists and creators.
“Counting on galleries, or trading posts, or even gift shops is not at all enough for our artists to have consistent and dependable income. It is not sustainable in this economy,” he said. “In today’s time with the unpredictable nature of the pandemic, economic inflation or high gas prices – traveling far away from home every day is not the most ideal way to sell the work.”
Humeyestewa’s concept would create a safe and secure space for Indigenous artists to sell their work without having to leave home.
“It will be better than parking a car in the cold at a gas station, a bit more streamlined than on-line yard sales, and certainly safer than looking for bazaars on weekends or knocking on doors in the middle of a pandemic. The marketplace would be open and available to buy and sell the work from makers and creators twenty-four hours a day – seven days a week,” he said. “The ultimate goal in my vision is to build out a healthy, strong, sustainable long-term legacy business that will serve our tribal communities for many generations.”
The entrepreneurs selected for the Class of 2023 are: Akilah Martinez, Alberta Henry, Cody Artis, Denee Bex, Duane Homeyestewa, Geri Hongeva, Goldie Tom, Orlinda Skyberg, Roberto Nutlouis, Urando Begay, Valerie Tsosie, and Zacharia Ben.