Indigenous Biz Con returned for its fifth year Oct. 11-13, bringing Indigenous leaders, entrepreneurs and community members to Milwaukee to explore a potential economic renaissance for Indian Country.
The annual conference, held at Potawatomi Casino, featured discussions on the current state and future of Tribal enterprise across the country. Organized by the Indigenous Business Group (IBG), a nonprofit that connects Native-owned businesses with reous leaders, entrepreneurs, community members and elected officials from across the United States and multiple industries
This year’s theme was “Indigenous Renaissance,” reflecting a growing push for Tribes to move beyond working in isolation and build stronger partnerships. Organizers say this collective approach could help drive a new era of economic opportunity and collaboration across Indian Country.
“What we’re understanding is that what the federal government did to tribes, but putting them in these locations and giving them sovereignty, was never meant for us to be successful,” said Rob Pero, one of the founders of IBG. “What it’s turned into is a really immense opportunity for tribes as being the absolute best business partners in the world, sovereignty, self-determination to regulate whatever industry on your own land.”
Tribes have found themselves in a unique position amid the Trump administration’s tariffs, which have affected businesses and prices. Tribal sovereignty may create opportunities for Tribes to leverage foreign-trade-zone arrangements to strengthen their enterprises and partnerships while reducing exposure to multiple layers of taxation.
At the same time, Tribes are moving beyond working in isolation, building more collaborative relationships with one another and with the states where they are located.
“That’s what makes us a renaissance. Like we have all the tools in our war chest to take our culture back, to leave business, to build better relationships, to be inclusive, and find ways to be good business partners in our state to keep the dollars local because we’re all community members here,” Pero said. “This isn’t just the tribes versus non-tribal. This is the tribes opening doors to everybody to have a stronger community together and be more interconnected.”
Pero noted that tribes have only ever really been in contact with each other when pressing issues have faced them nationwide. The gaming reformcaused tribes to be hyper-competitive and not collaborate much, Pero said.
A larger topic covered in the conference was artificial intelligence, energy infrastructure and data centers. One of the sessions, “Innovation Across Indian Country,” brought CEOs in energy, economic development and construction to speak on the potential for Tribal enterprise to capitalize on the current wave of data center construction.
Jeff Johnson, chief operating officer of Potawatomi Ventures, the economic development arm of the Forest County Potawatomi Community, discussed a development project the tribe launched 13 years ago.
“The tribe had the wherewithal to invest in technology, and with that, the location was relevant,” Johnson said. “The tribe had the wherewithal to put together and prioritize sustainability and ecological impact.”
The data center is not like what is currently being pushed to build now as AI has taken the reins of development interests. It is not a hyperscale facility; its general ecological impact is not fully comparable to the demands of modern data centers needed for AI.
However, it did put forward a roadmap for a responsible building out of a data center. Potawatomi’s data center is cooled with a closed-loop glycol system — an antifreeze compound — to absorb and remove heat from equipment. Modern AI-focused data centers are known to rely on water from the area in which it is built.
“The only water that’s servicing that data center in operation is to flush the toilets and use the sink. That’s it. So a family household uses more water every year than the data center,” Johnson said. “We also have a solar array that’s on campus as well, and that solar array can support the daily operations of the data center itself.”
Johnson supports a moratorium on data centers, like the one currently being considered by Milwaukee’s City Council, because it does not approach things in a sustainable way.
There is a risk, Johnson and other panelists admitted, by having to go through extra levels of consideration to make a data center comes with increased costs. When it was created 13 years ago, the price tag came in at around $28 million. The same project now would cost around $75 million, Johnson said.
“The capex to get involved in that investment is very high, and it prices tribes out of the market,” Johnson said. “If you don’t prioritize it, and it’s not a priority actually in the community, there’s a lot the tribe could do with $75 million.”
Still, there is opportunity to be involved with data centers in a way that is sustainable even if the price tag is too high.
Isaiah Ness, CEO of Sun Bear Industries, pointed to the energy demands of in-demand data center construction needs that current power grids cannot always fulfill.
“In order to build these gigantic facilities, you need access to power, and so you can’t incentivize tech without incentivizing power. Right now, there’s a huge issue with, I would say, the macro scale data centers,” Ness said. “What Jeff is referring to, building those models with solar systems, building those models of small clean energy, is very feasible. That’s something that every tribe in the country can obtain.”
Ness said that despite the pushback on data centers, many of those are some years off from being completed. There is a chance to build the necessary infrastructure that can bring in cash flow to the community.
“In the chaos of it all, there’s also a huge opportunity, particularly for tribes, to not only take ownership of some of this infrastructure before you get approached by a large tech company asking to lease land or develop land, but to really be part of the virtuous cycle and make sure that you keep the cash within the community,” Ness said.
Multiple sessions tackled the increased interest in Indigenous stories following the success of movies and shows like “Prey,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Reservation Dogs” and more.
Authentic, relevant storytelling is different now from how Native Americans have been historically portrayed on screen, said Jhane Myers, producer behind movies like “Prey.”
“Maybe I was about 5 years old, and I was watching the animated ‘Peter Pan’ … and then when the Native part came on and all the Indians were dancing, we were all red,” Myers said. “And they had big noses, and just a caricature that is not the beauty of our people.”
Myers felt horrible about what she saw. She realized at a young age that something needed to change. Her path to making that change came from Disney when she owned one of the few Native-owned marketing and public relations companies in the United States.
She came up through the ranks where she delved into filmmaking and producing, where she found enough success to make a never-before-heard-of demand. Myers managed to get “Prey” dubbed in Comanche.
“‘Prey’ holds the record on Hulu. That is the largest film launch and the most watched they have had,” Myers said. “When ‘Prey’ came out, it was shown that Natives watch entertainment.”
Myers has been in rooms where people haven’t been aware that something is about Native Americans, and it rattles their brains that it is an audience that wants entertainment relevant to them.
“I was looking at them like, ‘Do you think we all live in teepees and we don’t have electricity,’” Myers said. “It was a great proving point when ‘Prey’ came out and did so well because it broke all the records, and to this day we still hold the records.”
In the theme of the conference, entertainment — culturally relevant and accurate entertainment — is a legitimate economic vehicle in Tribal enterprise. Tribes can hire locals to act, consult, produce, grant access to film on their land and more. All that money can be funnelled back into the community to bolster its local economy.
Jonathan Thunder, animator and filmmaker, gave an example on how tribes can raise funds or utilize local tax incentives as he works on his short films “Ish and the Mermaid” and “Gitche Gumee Gazette.”
“I broke out in a sweat thinking about the very idea of trying to ask anybody for $10k,” Thunder said. “I found out that there are people out there who like to sign over a check for $10k for arts, maybe through a kind of nonprofit’s fiscal sponsor is nothing, you know. But I don’t know these people. I, these aren’t people in my arts circle.”
Thunder learned that for the sake of tax deductions, people will just send a check. He realized it would cost more than $10,000 fairly soon, but he would receive money each month for his project.
“What people can do when they need to deduct taxes, so that equals art in my little small end of the filmmaking industry,” Thunder said. “I was able to pay filmmakers $250 a day to come and do things like hair and makeup.”
He also took advantage of tax rebates offered in Minnesota. The state has a lot of film incentives, like a 25% rebate, that can go towards further work in the movie or be used to pay yourself to sustain an entertainment career.
“If you raise $100,000 to make your film, and to me that’s a lot of money. For some people that’s just scrap. $100,000 spent,” Thunder said. “Your film’s made. The State of Minnesota will give you $50k. That’s your incentive. You put that in your pocket.”
