Focusing on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and their homeland, the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina, Courtney Lewis’s Sovereign Entrepreneurs addresses a striking lack of ethnographic research on Native American small-business owners. More importantly, this monograph responds to prior scholarship that has overwhelmingly associated economic sovereignty and self-determination with large operations overseen by tribal governments, especially casino gaming. Lewis persuasively argues that small businesses play a crucial role in mitigating Indigenous economic precarity by lessening tribal governments’ administrative burdens and fostering economic diversification that has combatted the effects of a single-industry (tourism) market and allowed the EBCI to brave the economic downturn of the Great Recession.
Lewis’s in-depth coverage of issues relating to Eastern Band entrepreneurs is the product of months of participant observation research among business owners, government officials, and classmates in an “Indianpreneurship” course; personal experience as a Cherokee small-business owner; and familiarity with comparative cases...
