Economic development is one of the great challenges of contemporary indigenous peoples. The world has become a globalized marketplace, and most contemporary economic sustainability requires access to markets, but also the ability to own and profit from significant scale production according to the demands of the market. Indian peoples have long been associated with the processes of market globalization.

The most significant early relation between North American Indians and European colonists was the fur trade. Indians, however, were not owners of production; at best they were workers for trading posts, or local traders. Indians did not accept the market values of producing goods to maximize individual profit or exploiting the supplies of fur bearing animals for personal gain. Indians quickly became dependent on European goods, and found it necessary to supply furs and exploit animals according to the demands and needs of their European fur trading partners.

American Indians are looking to develop sustainable cultural and political communities, and many now think that without market related economies, tribal communities will have great difficulty obtaining cultural or political autonomy. Dependency on federal funds limits decision making capacities of individuals and tribal governments, while control over economic resources enhances the possibilities to make and implement culturally informed community decision making.

Some of the most successful tribal communities are those that have maintained or acquired a sustainable economic niche. The so-called Five Civilized Tribes of the American South during the 1820s to 1900 took up agriculture, cotton marketing and cattle raising. The tribes of the Pacific Northwest have benefitted from fishing markets, although they often lost fishing rights and territories. Plains tribes lost the buffalo and were forced onto reservations primarily for economic reasons rather than military reasons.

Tribes that lost their economic base or fur trade relations were often politically and economically marginalized and then placed on small reservations. Some tribes have sold or leased farm land, natural resources like coal, uranium, timber, and more recently, gaming. While tribes with natural resources and gaming revenue have had mixed success, those ventures do not necessarily lead to greater education and development of skills for successful market participation, or cultural renewal.

U.S. Indian policy has emphasized small farming with the various allotment acts, or migration to urban areas for wage-labor employment. Very little policy was devoted to strengthening collective tribal enterprises, or significantly strengthening tribal institutional capabilities to foster economic entrepreneurship. As early as the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act tribes have had the option to form tribal corporations, but few ever adopted the IRA corporate plan. Nowadays, many tribes have adopted tribal corporations, but ones of their own creation, often adapted to the social and cultural institutions of their own communities.

Tribal communities now choose combinations of traditional subsistence economy, individual entrepreneurship and tribally-owned enterprises or corporations. The direct adoption of Western-style individual capitalist enterprise is not acceptable to most tribal communities. The pathway to economic sustainability will require reconciling the demands of the marketplace with the cultural institutions, worldviews, and political processes of tribal communities. Tribal communities are finding innovative ways to use the marketplace for creating wealth, but at the same time many prefer to own, operate and distribute wealth in collective ways that preserve and strengthen tribal identity and political community.

So far economic success in Indian country is decidedly uneven, largely the result of varied opportunities, since all tribal cultures and institutions are not compatible with Western market institutions and culture. As Native organizations devoted to fostering relationships between tribal businesses grow, sustained economic prosperity is certain to become the norm and not the exception.