Mi'kmaq Enterprise and Workforce Pathways Initiative: training Mi'kmaq citizens in construction trades and business ownership, so Tribal members build the Nation's new homes and earn the wages. - The Mi'kmaq people have lived in the northeastern woodlands for 9,000 years. About 65,000 remain across thirty bands, and only one of them is a federally recognized Tribe inside the United States. It sits in Aroostook County, at the top of Maine, with 1,633 citizens. Recognition came in 1991, making it one of the last Tribes in the country to gain that standing. Everything it has, it has built in the thirty-five years since. The Mi'kmaq Nation is now preparing to build and repair more than at any point in its history. It owns 107 homes in four communities that need work, and it plans new housing, a second phase of courthouse repairs, an administration building, an emergency operations center, and a facility to process meat raised on Tribal land. The buildings will go up either way. This project decides who builds them. Today the answer is: someone else. Few Mi'kmaq citizens yet hold the certificates these jobs require, and few Mi'kmaq-owned businesses are set up to bid. The wages leave within the week, bound for contractors in nearby towns. One in three employed citizens on Tribal land works for the Tribal government, while one in a hundred works the land, forest, or water, though the Nation owns 3,294 acres of all three. Families here earn about a third less than other families in Maine, and their income has been falling while the state's has risen. When the Nation surveyed its people, a quarter had no work and three in ten could find only part-time hours. The two things they asked for were training and help starting a business. The Mi'kmaq Enterprise and Workforce Pathways Initiative treats the Nation's construction schedule as a training deadline. It has three parts and aims at one result: more Mi'kmaq citizens working, earning, and owning. Thirty citizens will work one-on-one with a business coach on pricing, bookkeeping, registration, and finding customers and capital, producing twelve Mi'kmaq-owned businesses started or expanded. Twenty artists, crafters, and food producers will reach new customers through the Mi'kmaq Artisan Collective, selling at the Nation's yearly Mawiomi gathering and, from a grant-funded trailer, at markets far beyond the county. Forty-five citizens will enroll in six training groups held evenings and weekends so working people can attend. Thirty-six are expected to finish and fifteen to earn certificates employers require: construction and job-site safety, the federal certification needed to work safely on older homes that may contain lead paint, forklift and chainsaw safety, and food safety management. Twenty graduates go on a list the Nation's own departments use when they hire and when they award work. That list is the part that outlasts the money. Elders and knowledge holders are paid teachers here, not guests. They will teach snowshoe and canoe making, basketry, beadwork, and traditional foods, and mentor citizens opening businesses. Knowledge the Nation has relied on for free becomes paid work, with a record of who learned it. The Nation will also update its economic development plan, adopt it by Council vote, and measure for the first time how its citizens are doing. Years ago, that plan called for exactly this kind of business support. It listed three steps. The Nation completed the first two with its own money, hiring an economic development director and restarting its business corporation. This grant pays for the third. Tribes across the country are managing more construction than they have in a generation, and most of that labor is still bought from outside. The model here is simple enough for any of them to adapt: a Nation's own building plan, used as a jobs plan. Under Program Area 5, Indigenous Designs to Empower and Advance Self-Determination, the Nation requests $400,000 and contributes $100,000 of its own, for $500,000 over a three-year period. At least 75 citizens take part, about one in sixteen adults. No grant funds pay for construction or property.
