Oct 14, 2006 - 02:06:05 CDT
FARGO (AP) - Darrell Wallette's old Chevy pickup truck gave him a jump-start as a young entrepreneur.Wallette sold the pickup, inherited from his father, and the $600 he pocketed gave him the seed money for a new business printing adhesive labels.
Northern Documents, now located in an industrial building in West Fargo, was born in a shack next to his mother's mobile home in Belcourt, on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation.
Starved for cash, Wallette did everything he could to keep costs low. With 75 feet of line, he extended his home phone to his business, giving him a vital link to the outside world.
Today, he has expanded his business to include seven employees, serving customers mostly in the Red River Valley, but also with accounts in far-flung locations that include Arizona and New Mexico. In the beginning, he farmed out his printing orders; now he runs two presses in-house.
Northern Documents is but one of 852 American Indian-owned businesses in North Dakota, which collectively accounted for revenues of almost $121 million in 2002, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
American Indian-owned firms - those in which Indians own at least 51 percent of a business - employed 673 workers. Nearly 11 percent of Indian-owned businesses employed workers, compared to 29 percent of all firms in North Dakota.
"While Native American firms tend to employ fewer people relative to other firms in the state, their contributions to North Dakota's economy are unmistakable," said demographer Richard Rathge, director of the North Dakota State Data Center.
Scott Satermo, the majority owner of Rising Sun Construction in Fargo, took a different path from his roots on North Dakota's Fort Berthold Indian Reservation into the world of business.
A civil engineer who once worked for the city of Fargo on public works projects, Satermo made the switch to utility contracting in 2001 when he acquired a majority stake in Shaw Construction.
Now he bids on utility projects, including streets and underground utilities, with three crews on projects in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.
"We just beefed it up a little," he said of the expansion of his business. He also has diversified, becoming majority owner of a business called North Core that does underground boring, which dovetails nicely with utility contracting.
Satermo's business acquisitions were aided by loan guarantees provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs under a program similar to the Small Business Administration.
Although proud of his Mandan-Hidatsa heritage and equally proud of his Norwegian ancestry, Satermo said the focus is strictly business, not minority business.
"I think most of our success is we competitively bid on the open market," he said.
Wallette agrees. Some large corporations, following the federal government's lead, have diversity programs, allocating a portion of their purchases to minority firms. "But that's not a meal ticket," he said. "You still have to be fast and strong, and as good as or better than other vendors."
Wallette saw an opportunity in printing adhesive labels, a service largely unmet by local firms in the Red River Valley. "There was a geographic niche available," he said.
Wallette predicts a gradual increase in the number of American Indian entrepreneurs. The first generation of Indians to graduate in large numbers with college degrees, a movement that began in the 1960s, concentrated largely on careers in education, followed by another generation that focused largely on the health field. Now more Indians are drawn to business and law, he believes.
"I think it comes down to access" to education and opportunity, he said. "We didn't have access years ago."
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