On the first day of this year’s Reservation Economic Summit in Las Vegas, some 200 people were milling around a conference room in Caesars Palace waiting to meet with potential business partners. The summit’s annual Buy Native matchmaking expo felt sort of like a speed-dating event, but it was at 9 a.m., the dress code was business casual and the goal was to leave with a contract. 

“You have to kiss a lot of frogs. You have to meet a lot of people,” said Sharon Hamer, co-founder of Akiak Holdings, owned by the Akiak Native Community. 

“We’re in remote southwest Alaska, and we can provide the same level of services as the lower 48 tribes,” Hamer said, including services in technology and facilities management.

About 75 buyers were present, including a couple of Fortune 500 companies like Walmart and lots of federal agencies. 

“We give you the opportunity to sit down and meet with a company or with a federal government to talk about a potential opportunity,” said Chris James, president and CEO of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, which hosts the Reservation Economic Summit. “We expect over $1 billion worth of contracts will be given out this year.” 

Federal contracting is big business in this economy. And the share of those contracts being won by tribal enterprises is on the rise. According to an analysis by Tribal Business News and the market intelligence firm HigherGov, firms owned by tribal nations, Alaska Native corporations and Native Hawaiian organizations won a record $23.3 billion in federal contracts in 2023. That marks the eighth consecutive year of growth. 

Brad Root was representing Puyallup Tribal Enterprises at the matchmaking expo. His agenda included meetings with people from the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy. 

“We have a global logistics group. We actually have a candy company. We have a manufacturing group, which is what I’m responsible for,” Root said. 

All new ventures that the Puyallup Tribe launched or purchased just in the last two years. “We offer printing services, manufacturing, assembly, warehousing, distribution,” Root said. “Anything that can go to serve the federal government.” 

For the last 30 years, Puyallup has been a gaming tribe. Its Emerald Queen Casino just outside of Tacoma, Washington, has been a pretty reliable economic engine, except for a tough stretch starting in March 2020. 

“Because COVID came in really hurt the gaming, you know, that this kind of basically shut them down,” Root said. “That was one of the things that helped prompt [the tribal council] to get diversification.” 

The pandemic gave lots of tribal governments that same wakeup call, said Lillian Sparks Robinson, CEO of Wopila Consulting. 

“It was just difficult for the public to access these otherwise normally successful ventures that promote economic development in tribal communities,” she said, including casinos, hotels, restaurants and tourism enterprises. 

Meanwhile, federal spending picked up under the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan. Sparks Robinson said government contracting became more attractive to tribes that were struggling to make do as their traditional revenue streams dried up. 

“Because the revenue that’s generated pours back into the infrastructure, the education, that housing, the health care, elder programs in that particular community,” Sparks Robinson said. 

Tribal enterprises fund government operations and vital social services in many tribal communities, which typically do not have a tax base to fall back on. Many have a dual mandate of generating revenue and gainfully employing as many tribal citizens as possible. Sparks Robinson noted that that’s what makes tribal firms unique, and why they don’t always behave like traditional, profit-driven companies.

“It is certainly a constant, this education and awareness piece about how Native entities operate differently,” she said. 

At the Reservation Economic Summit, Sharon Hamer spent a lot of her 15-minute matchmaking sessions educating potential business partners about how Akiak Holdings functions and what its revenue pays for. 

“It’s really hard to explain the structure when you’re in a sort of a speed dating kind of format,” Hamer said. 

But the firm’s community impact is part of her pitch, “because it is so compelling.” 

Since its 2019 launch, Akiak Holdings has won some big contracts, including a $100 million deal with the Department of Defense. Hamer said it’s helped her rural tribe make a major investment. 

“We worked with the tribal government to build the first-ever, in southwest Alaska, [low Earth orbit] satellite broadband network,” she said. “So every home in the native village of Akiak got broadband, right at the height of COVID, which was very, very important.” 

Hamer didn’t leave Vegas with a contract. But she built some new relationships that, down the road, could lead to a deal.