Tribes’ business footprint extends from rural reservations to urban centers

Tribes make strategic decisions about how, when, and where they launch enterprises to provide goods and services and generate essential revenue to serve their communities. New research from the Center for Indian Country Development (CICD) explores how tribal business locations vary by rural to urban geography, as tribes factor the unique circumstances, needs, and advantages of different areas.

Our analysis shows that tribes operate businesses in a variety of geographies, from rural to urban areas and both on and off tribal lands. As might be expected, tribal businesses located on tribal lands—where nearly all land is rural—tend to be in rural areas. But our analysis paints a fuller picture of the geography of tribal businesses. Off tribal lands, tribal businesses tend to locate in urban areas. When tribes operate businesses outside of tribal lands, they often do so in counties with higher educational attainment, employment, and income, which might offer a larger customer base and greater access to labor with the specific skills needed.

Across geographies, tribes weigh what business location will best serve their tribal citizens. “In many ways, a tribe’s decision-making process for locating a business is no different than the process for any other type of enterprise,” said Chris James (Cherokee), president and CEO of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development (NCAIED) and a former member of the CICD Leadership Council. “What sets a tribal enterprise apart is taking into consideration how a potential business location benefits tribal citizens, whether that’s through employment opportunities or their ability to access the goods or services the business provides. A tribe’s obligation to act in the best interest of its citizens inherently affects nearly every decision its tribally owned enterprises make. Tribes are sovereign nations, and these decisions are true exercises of sovereignty.”

This latest analysis of CICD’s Native Entity Enterprises Dataset (NEED) examined 5,607 tribally owned businesses owned in 2023 by tribes based in the lower 48 states. As part of our work to address long-standing economic data gaps in Indian Country, CICD assembled the NEED to advance understanding of the economic contributions of tribally owned businesses. Earlier analyses of the NEED explored tribally owned businesses’ core characteristics and diversification across industries.

More often than not, tribes locate their businesses on tribal lands

Tribes weigh many considerations in determining where to establish a business, including whether to locate the business on or off the tribe’s land. Both options may offer advantages and challenges. For example, locating a business on a reservation may create employment opportunities for tribal citizens. At the same time, a location outside of tribal lands may offer closer proximity to business partners and to labor with specialized skills the businesses need. In some cases, such as with gaming operations conducted under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, legal requirements and restrictions may affect where a tribal business can locate.

Beyond business advantages, tribal enterprises factor the needs of the communities in which they might locate. For Siyeh Corporation, a federally chartered, tribally owned enterprise of the Blackfeet Nation, headquartered in Browning, Montana, conducting business on the reservation was an important way to invest in tribal infrastructure. “We recognized the lack of basic services on our reservation close to three decades ago and made it our objective to bring those businesses to the community through our own efforts,” said Dennis Fitzpatrick (Blackfeet Tribal Nation), Siyeh Corporation CEO and a Helena Branch director for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “It was clear to us then and to this day that if our enterprise did not seek to finance and build the economic infrastructure for our tribe, that it would not be accomplished. We’ve demonstrated that businesses located on the reservation—even those with short seasons—can be an important part of a tribe’s economic development strategy.”

Working with the National Establishment Time Series database, a subscription data source, CICD determined the locations of businesses in the NEED based on where the work takes place. We found that across the country, two-thirds (67.5 percent) of the tribally owned businesses active in 2023 were located on tribal lands. As shown in Figure 1, the share of tribally owned businesses on tribal lands varies widely by state, in part reflecting the fact that some states have little or no tribal land.

North Dakota had the highest share of its tribally owned businesses (96.0 percent) on tribal lands, followed by Montana (92.9 percent) and Oklahoma (91.2 percent). These states also tend to have more of their geography designated as tribal land.

Locations of tribally owned businesses are geographically diverse

Both on and off tribal lands, tribes operate businesses in rural to urban geographies. Each area offers its own advantages: “Rural reservation communities can offer tribes access to land, natural resources, lower operating costs, and a strong connection to the tribal community. Urban markets, by contrast, provide greater access to customers, larger workforce, proximity to suppliers, and transportation infrastructure,” said Tralynna Sherrill Scott (Cherokee Nation), chief economist with Cherokee Nation Businesses and a member of the CICD Leadership Council. “A successful tribal economic strategy recognizes that these are complementary advantages and uses both rural and urban investments to build a diversified and resilient economy.”

While tribal lands across the United States are nearly entirely rural, with 99.1 percent of tribal land area located in communities with fewer than 2,500 people, tribally owned businesses are more geographically diverse. Overall, 60.4 percent of all tribally owned businesses in the United States are located in rural areas, 13.8 percent in urban clusters (communities with 2,500–50,000 people), and 25.8 percent in urban areas (communities with more than 50,000 people), based on our analysis of the NEED.

When we focus on tribally owned businesses located on tribal lands, the picture becomes more rural. As shown in Figure 2, 73.6 percent of tribal businesses on tribal lands were located in rural areas, 13.8 percent in urban clusters, and 12.7 percent in urban areas. That’s not surprising, given the overwhelmingly rural nature of tribal lands. However, the share of tribal businesses on tribal lands located in urban areas and urban clusters is higher than the overall rurality of tribal lands would suggest.

Outside of tribal lands, a majority of tribally owned businesses were in urban areas or urban clusters (52.9 percent and 14.0 percent, respectively) instead of in non-tribal areas that are rural. This aligns with previous CICD research finding that of tribal enterprises in the U.S. Small Business Administration 8(a) Business Development program,^* which tend to locate in areas where their federal contract work is performed, 70 percent were in counties without reservations.

For the most part, rural-urban patterns persist across regions

We also explored whether rural-urban patterns of tribal business locations hold up across the four major regions of the United States: Midwest, Northeast, South, and West. Figure 3 shows that in every U.S. region, tribally owned businesses on tribal lands are more often found in rural communities than in either urban areas or urban clusters, although to a lesser extent in the Northeast and South. In these two regions, a small majority of tribally owned businesses on tribal lands are located in areas with populations below 2,500.

To some extent, these findings likely reflect regional differences in population densities. Almost all land in the Midwest and West is designated as rural (97.0 and 98.9 percent, respectively), and a majority (65.8 percent) of all tribally owned businesses on tribal lands are located in these areas. But even in these highly rural regions, tribes locate proportionally more of their businesses in urban areas and urban clusters.

Consistent with its higher share of tribally owned businesses in urban areas, the Northeast also has the largest proportions of its land designated as urban areas (9.3 percent) and urban clusters (1.3 percent).

Different locations present different business advantages

With a third (32.5 percent) of tribally owned businesses located outside of tribal lands, we looked at key demographic characteristics of the counties in which these businesses are located, to shed light on potential advantages of their locations. As shown in Figure 4, counties in which tribally owned businesses are located outside of tribal lands have more than four times the population density of the homelands of the tribes that own those businesses. Overall, these counties also show higher levels of educational attainment, with a higher percentage of adults ages 25 and older holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, as well as higher median household incomes and lower unemployment rates. These factors may signify a customer base that is larger or has more disposable income, or a more varied pool of skilled workers. In a 2020 survey of Native-owned businesses, CICD and NCAIED found that while business owners perceived similar costs of doing business on and off reservations, they saw greater sales potential off reservations.

“When tribes look at opportunities off the reservation, they often focus on businesses and markets where the tribe already has experience,” Fitzpatrick said. He gave the example of Siyeh Corporation’s telecommunications company, Siyeh Communications. “By looking at ways to expand our service territory off-reservation, we are doing so with the objective of reaching larger broadband markets that will allow us to purchase bandwidth at lower cost and thereby transfer these savings to our reservation customers.”

Understanding a pillar of tribal economies

Through their business activities, tribes raise revenue to fund public services and infrastructure, create jobs that bolster local economies, and contribute to local and regional economies across the United States. Tribally owned businesses serve multiple purposes, and those varied purposes drive nuanced location decisions.

“A tribe can establish businesses on the reservation to meet local needs and strengthen the community while also establishing enterprises off the reservation [in locations] where the tribe can leverage its experience and competitive advantages,” Fitzpatrick said. “The location decision ultimately depends on the needs of the community, the objectives of the tribe, and where the enterprise has the greatest opportunity to succeed.”

Our latest analysis of the NEED dataset sheds light on the varied geographic footprint of tribes’ economic activity—one that extends far beyond tribal lands. Future analysis of the NEED will explore how the locations of tribally owned businesses vary by industry. By increasing understanding of a key lever of tribal economies, this research supports CICD’s mission to advance the economic self-determination and prosperity of Native nations and Indigenous communities through actionable data and research that inform public policy discussions.

Appendix: About the data

The NEED reflects businesses owned by federally recognized tribes in the lower 48 states. While the NEED is almost certainly an undercount, we believe it to be the most comprehensive dataset of tribally owned businesses yet compiled.

CICD’s processes for compiling the NEED are detailed in an earlier article. In this latest analysis of NEED data, we used an updated version of the dataset (v2026Q1, last updated on March 23, 2026) that focuses on businesses in operation in 2023 data in the National Establishment Time Series (NETS). The NEED dataset omits establishments coded in NETS as “public administration”—that is, having North American Industry Classification System codes starting with 92—in order to exclude government functions.

Working with the NETS database, CICD determined the locations of businesses in the NEED based on where the work takes place. For example, in the case of an enterprise with more than one location, we mapped the individual business locations. We categorized businesses as being on tribal lands if they were located in any of the following tribal geographies tabulated by the U.S. Census Bureau: federally recognized American Indian reservations and off-reservation trust land areas, American Indian joint-use areas, state-recognized American Indian reservations, Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Areas (OTSAs), OTSA joint-use areas, Tribal Designated Statistical Areas, and State Designated Tribal Statistical Areas. CICD acknowledges that tribal geographies tabulated by the U.S. Census Bureau and used in this analysis do not encompass all geographies having current or historical associations with Native nations.

To categorize businesses into three distinctive rural-urban geographies, we relied on U.S. Census Bureau 2010 classifications of rural areas, urban clusters, and urban areas. (Classifications for 2020 do not include urban clusters.) Applying 2020 population counts to the 2010 classifications, we categorized geographies with fewer than 2,500 people as rural, geographies with 2,500–50,000 people as urban clusters, and geographies with more than 50,000 people as urban areas. We also relied on U.S. Census Bureau definitions to group businesses into four different regions in the United States: Midwest, Northeast, South, and West.

Endnote

* The Small Business Administration (SBA) 8(a) program gives preference in government contracting to socially and economically disadvantaged businesses. For more on the SBA 8(a) program and its role in Indian Country, see CICD’s 2021 and 2023 analyses of Native entities and federal contracting.