Lance Morgan: Sharing Winnebago Tribe's story with White House

Wednesday, July 20, 2011  

"I recently was invited to the Champions of Change event for rural America. It was great to meet with President Obama and Secretary Vilsack and hear how much they cared about some of the unique issues facing rural America. The President took the time and was gracious enough to introduce himself to everyone at the meeting. All and all, not my typical Wednesday afternoon.

I run a company called Ho-Chunk, Inc. located on an Indian reservation in Winnebago, Nebraska. The company is owned by the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and our mission to create job opportunities for our tribal members and to help our tribe become economically self-sufficient. After 15 years of efforts we have companies involved in retail, government contracting, distribution, construction, housing and various internet companies. We do work in three other foreign countries. We started with 1 employee and now have 1400. Our revenues have grown from zero to close to $200 million a year, all in a rural Nebraska town of 1500 people.

In 1991, the tribe had an unemployment rate of approximately 60 percent. Now we have more jobs than working age people in our community. We are proud of our accomplishments economically, but social and educational development are just as important to our tribe. In 2000, Ho-Chunk, Inc. started a non-profit corporation called the Ho-Chunk Community Development Corporation. The non-profit's mission was to help make our community a better place and to provide supplemental capital to build the infrastructure in our community to help it grow. To date, our non-profit has raised over $23 million for our community."

Get the Story:
Lance Morgan: Tribal Members in Rural America (White House Blog 7/20)