TUBA CITY, Ariz. — There was much excitement in Tuba City June 16 when the Change Labs entrepreneurship center opened its doors to the public after a ribbon-cutting ceremony with guests including Navajo Nation President, Buu Nygren, and several leaders of Tuba City.
The 1,400-square-foot event space, meeting space and community center is the first building of its kind for curious business owners, creatives and entrepreneurs on the Navajo Nation.
“This space is a place where we can meet. It is a space where ideas will be born. It’s a space for partnership,” said Heather Fleming, co-founder and executive director of Change Labs. “We think it’s a space where businesses can flourish. And most importantly, it’s a space where we can begin to build community.
The Entrepreneurship Hub is intended to serve as a permanent facility for Change Labs, offering a range of business workshops, coaching sessions and incubation services. Additionally, it functions as a convenient reception office for current and potential entrepreneurs, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and assistance in establishing and operating businesses within the reservation.
“The opening of our first entrepreneurship hub has been in the works for a long time and meets a deep and urgent need on the reserve. Finally, entrepreneurs, creatives and makers have a space to come together, work, learn, meet their peers and find support to bring their ideas and vision to life,” Fleming said.
The hub offers various amenities including free work desks, internet access, a copy and scan center, event space, as well as a meeting room that can be booked for team collaborations, interactions with customers and commitments with suppliers.
Fleming told the crowd that building the entrepreneurship center in Tuba City was a long process.
“The reason we are all here today is because we achieved something that everyone told us was impossible,” she said. “We built a building that is the Navajo Nation’s premier center for small businesses, and many of you who live in Navajo or Hopi know that was no small feat. When I lived in California, I started my first business in 2009. It was easy. I registered my business in one day in an office in downtown San Francisco. When I needed office space, I looked at a few buildings available for rent and moved in within 30 days.
But that’s not how it works on the reservation, Fleming said.
“That’s why this work is so important. Entrepreneurship and trade are essential to our prosperity,” she said. “And this is something our ancestors understood, as the speakers before me have said. Yet the fact that it has taken this many years to get to this point is a testament to the difficult road our entrepreneurs and artists face every day.
Meeting a community need
Change Labs was created to promote and help small, indigenous businesses on Navajo and Hopi reservations take steps toward economic self-sufficiency.
Navajo small businesses are growing at half the rate of the rest of the United States, according to the organization.
They found that lack of infrastructure, limited funding for small businesses, lack of support networks and mentors, and a history of exclusion from national and global economies impact indigenous startups.
Change Labs identified the need for a shared resource center based on common and recurring business challenges raised by entrepreneurs attending its entrepreneurial workshops and events, which Change Labs has hosted on the Navajo Nation since 2014.
It took five years for the hub to come to fruition, with the organization facing myriad challenges.
“The question of territory and space constitutes one of the most persistent obstacles to the prosperity of our communities. For those interested in starting and running a business or organization on the reservation, it is often difficult and time-consuming to find a physical space, then determine what is required and navigate the bureaucracy,” said Jessica Stago, co-founder of ChangeLabs.
Government estimates put unemployment on the reservation at around 50 percent, Fleming noted.
“We believe that a large part of this number is made up of individual entrepreneurs: food sellers, artisans and jewelers who do not consider themselves entrepreneurs. They are model indigenous entrepreneurs because they do it for the love of their profession or to feed their families, and not because they are looking for an exit strategy or to amass a fortune.
Nygren also spoke at the inauguration and thanked the founders and contributors for their perseverance in building the entrepreneurship hub.
“I’ve always talked about believing in our entrepreneurs, believing in our people, that they are more than capable of being successful here on Navajo and that they should prefer to live on the Navajo Nation,” he said. “What can we do to change this? We need to work with attorneys, we need to work with other outside organizations, just like we worked with the Tuba City chapter president. We can continue to pick up the pace because we are all tired of hearing the answer “no”, of knowing who is in the way and what is not possible. And I sincerely believe that the laboratories of change will continue to accelerate the pace.
The new entrepreneurship hub was made possible by the generous support of the Flora Family Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation, Common Future, the Reis Family Foundation and the Grand Canyon Trust.
The hub is open to the public. Anyone living on reserve, running a business or interested in starting a business on reserve will have access to the hub’s facilities and services as well as Change Labs training and workshops.
More information about Change Labs is available at nativestartup.org.
