The tribe is taking steps toward restoring its economic sovereignty.
Our three-truck convoy has been traveling for four hours through northwest Nevada when Philip Frank breaks the silence.
“You can tell we're getting close now,” he says. “There is Paiute Peak in the distance." Frank, a member of the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe and an elected official on its Tribal Council, gestures toward the North Black Rock Range. On the other side of the peak lies his tribe’s reservation, the most remote in Nevada, 14,000 square acres of high desert sagebrush steppe. It is a nearly five-hour drive from Reno, 60 of the 175 miles over suspension-crushing dirt and rock road.
The Summit Lake Paiute, like most of the 574 federally-recognized Native communities in the United States, are working to revive, preserve and strengthen their tribal community despite a history of traumatic oppression and exclusion from economic opportunities. University of Notre Dame MBA students in Frontlines in America this fall were invited to work with them on a project to support their efforts for economic sovereignty. Frontlines in America is one of several courses in the Meyer Business on the Frontlines Program, an initiative in the Mendoza College of Business that seeks to co-create livelihood and job-creation solutions with communities affected by poverty, violence and isolation.
There are 217 members of the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, most of whom live in the Reno/Sparks region of Nevada. No one lives full time on their reservation. Instead, it is kept operational by the Tribe’s Natural Resources Department, who work to protect the ecosystem on the reservation including endangered species like the Lahontan cutthroat trout and the sage grouse. In its original language, the Tribe is known as agai panina ticutta, or Summit Lake trout eaters.
Frank’s family is among those in the Tribe who have a reservation allotment. He said they plan to clear it out and put a trailer on it. It’ll just be a weekend home, though, because even if there were infrastructure for power or water on Summit Lake and a member wanted to live there full time, maintaining a life in this extreme remoteness would be difficult.
“Summit Lake is a smaller tribe, more than a third of whom are children. So it shows the need to focus on that next generation,” said Kelly Rubey (MBA '16), assistant teaching professor in the Mendoza College of Business and the instructor for the Frontlines in America course. “It presented an interesting set of dynamics, their tribal lands being so remote. We thought about what their tribe could look like in the future in a way that preserves the land and the culture while still generating some type of economic revenue.”
"What else could we do?"
The Tribe’s $3.1 million annual budget is almost entirely funded by the U.S. federal government through various grants and contracts. Tribal leadership wanted to uncover revenue generating opportunities, so the team, consisting of five MBA students and a law student plus two alumni advisers, explored wind and solar energy opportunities and ecotourism activities like camping and hiking on the Reservation.
As in all Frontlines classes, the team spent the first few weeks on campus researching and analyzing opportunities and meeting weekly with its partners; in Summit Lake’s case that meant connecting over Zoom with the Tribe’s Chairwoman, Randi Lone Eagle, and Teresa and Brian Melendez, who lead Tribal Minds, a nonprofit organization in Nevada.
“When we started with the first few weeks with the team, we saw very quickly that renewable energy was something that was not in our means. As they were thinking of ideas and you could see the team’s wheels turning, ‘What else could we do?’” said Chairwoman Lone Eagle.
Everything changed when the students visited the community mid-semester. Their first two days in Reno focused exclusively on cultural immersion. Brian Melendez, who is Paiute and a member of the Reno Sparks Indian Colony, invited the team to his family’s home on their Reservation for a day of Nevana Native history and cultural sharing.
“We wanted to introduce the students to the culture of the Indigenous people of the state, so that before they started engaging in face-to-face interactions and meetings with the Tribal Council and community members, they had more exposure to the history and geography of the tribes,” said Teresa Melendez, who is Brian’s spouse and Pokagon Potawatomi. Teresa grew up in her southwest Michigan tribal community and wrote her master's thesis on the relationship between the Pokagon Band and the University of Notre Dame.
Jay Brokoff (MBA ՚24) felt the team conveyed that they were there to listen and build a relationship and he said he was moved by the experience. According to him, it was freeing to share with partners and their community, sharing and listening.
“Everybody else was very open, so I felt comfortable doing that as well,” he said. “They respect me to share something that's deep to them. I think it's only fair to do the same thing. And so overall, it was a great experience in that regard.”
A few days later, during the almost 10-hour trip to and from Summit Lake, the team and the community members driving the sturdy 4x4 trucks alternated between brainstorming and problem solving and silently contemplating their project and the stark windswept beauty of the mountain ranges and the playa. The flat, white-sand playa once was the bed of ancient Lake Lahontan, a lake that 15,000 years ago filled many of the basins in northwestern Nevada.
“[Our Reservation] is a place of such pristine and untouched land. You have to see it. Inviting you to come was to really be open-minded and to showcase what we have in the Great Basin area and what is still available: medicines, food and plants and traditional things that we utilize.”
Chairwoman Randi Lone Eagle.
“[Our Reservation] is a place of such pristine and untouched land. You have to see it. You have to actually go there,” said Chairwoman Lone Eagle. “Inviting you guys to come was to really be open-minded and to showcase what we have in the Great Basin area and what is still available: medicines, food and plants and traditional things that we utilize.”
“One thing that surprised us was how much of the community was pretty resistant to having something like solar panels on their tribal lands. And around tourism too,” said Rubey. “That was really eye opening and informative of what their land means to them, and then gave the team a challenge of thinking outside the box of what else might they be able to do.”
In the end, following more conversations, interviews and multi-generational focus groups during a community meeting at the Tribal headquarters, the team’s recommendations centered on investing in real estate and hiring a grant writer to bring in more funding for services. Brokoff said the group heard the real estate idea mentioned in several interviews. He led a high-level modeling presentation during a presentation to the Tribal Council at the end of their visit to the community. After the Council gave their endorsement, the team took the idea back to campus and spent a lot of time forecasting financials and suggestions for next steps.
Since the final presentation in November, Chairwoman Lone Eagle reports that the job description for a grant writer has been posted. In addition to actionable steps toward economic sovereignty, the Frontlines team, Tribal Minds and the Summit Lake Paiute have formed important connections with this partnership.
“We're learning from each other together,” said Rubey. “The heart of Frontlines in America is the belief in the dignity of work, the freedom to make a living, to have options, to be accepted. It was a really good fit for our students to become more aware of the generational and historical trauma that tribes have faced. There's a lot of healing that needs to be done. And as we think about what role economic empowerment plays in all of that, our Frontlines lens brings something unique to the equation.”