"We've taken control of our destiny, gotten a taste of independence, and don't plan on giving it up. Government-led economies have been a total failure. I refuse to believe the Winnebagos are Karl Marx's last hope.” —Lance Morgan

Lance Morgan is the CEO of Ho-Chunk, Inc., a $100 million tribal economic development corporation that employs nearly 400 people. Tribal leaders and entrepreneurs such as Morgan are part of an economic civil rights movement emerging in indigenous communities around the world. The Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, which owns Ho-Chunk, Inc., started with a casino, then diversified to earn the revenue needed to build the necessary infrastructure for prosperous tribal economies. Winnebago and other tribes following the same path have found a way to unlock the economic potential of their communities in ways of returning to their roots, consistent with their cultures and customs, while integrating into the modern global economy.

As explained in an earlier D efining Ideas essay, tribes are drawing on their history that is rich with the ideas defining a free society based on individualism, community, governance, and liberty. The indigenous peoples of what we now call the Americas were diverse, but they all had effective forms of property rights and governance structures that allowed them to specialize, trade, and prosper. These institutions and traditions of trade and treaty-making helped them to adapt and prosper before the Columbian Exchange and then to adapt and trade with the European newcomers.

After the Civil War, as America expanded west with its new standing army, indigenous institutions were undermined by the imposition of colonial institutions. Under these regulations, the federal government outlawed historic governance structures, rituals, and property rights and imposed cookie-cutter constitutions, modeled after the U.S. Constitutions, and held Indian resources—namely land—in trust on the premise that Native Americans were not “competent and capable” to manage their own lives and affairs. Despite a rich heritage of indigenous institutions that allowed them to prosper prior to and during early European contact, today’s American Indian communities, still locked in a type of colonial bondage as trustees of the federal government, are struggling economies.

Federal trusteeship in the 21st century is absurd, especially given that tribes have proven to outperform the federal government. Consider the land itself. When tribes manage their own natural resources, they do better than the federal government….