(Click here to see our Oweesta Timeline)

OUR MISSION
To enhance the capacity of Native tribes, communities and peoples to access, control, create, leverage, utilize and retain financial assets; and to provide appropriate financial capital for Native development efforts.

OUR ROOTS
First Nations Oweesta Corporation as it is today was born of a long-term effort at our affiliate First Nations Development Institute to take a direct role in Developing Native Assets at the local level in Native communities.  While incorporation as a separate entity occurred in 1999, the experience and history of OWEESTA reaches back to the mid 1980s.  At that time the First Nations Oweesta Program and Fund was envisioned to develop alternative financing access for Native entrepreneurs, homebuyers and tribal businesses by helping to create Native-based financial institutions that would work directly with community members.  Investments and technical assistance were offered to these early Native financial institutions to promote their activities.(Click here to see our Oweesta Timeline)

In one early case (now permanently etched in the minds of Native economic development practitioners everywhere), the Lakota Fund on the Pine Ridge (Oglala Lakota) reservation in South Dakota was established by the First Nations’ team.  Starting in 1987 the Lakota Fund became the most known (if not the first) example of a Native community development financial institution (NCDFI).  (See the map of Native financial institutions today)  By 1989 the Lakota Fund was separated from the First Nations umbrella and forging ahead with noticeable impact on the private sector of Pine Ridge.  Through the 1990s the Oweesta Program did extensive research and technical assistance in Native communities and by the time the U.S. Treasury’s CDFI Fund legislation was passed in 1994, the Oweesta Program was poised to assist Native communities with a whole new phase of economic development.

Since 1999 the Oweesta Program has been known as the First Nations Oweesta Corporation, providing training, technical assistance, investments research and advocacy for the development of Native CDFIs and other support organizations in Native communities.