Quick, name a group that employs over 700,000 people in rural America.

Did you guess the thousands of tribal-owned businesses in “Indian Country”? As Patrice Kunesh, who directs the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, writes in Indian Country Today, while many American Indian nations face intense poverty, that’s not the whole story. While income levels in American Indian communities remain far below US norms, conditions for many are improving.

By Steve Dubb