Our community has always had strong entrepreneurial instincts. There is a long tradition of providing guide services to tourists venturing into the regional wilderness to hunt, fish and/or camp, for example. Tourists have also been very interested in obtaining our high quality, traditional and hand-made goods, such as baskets, beadwork and furniture. In recent decades, Abenaki-owned businesses have taken many new and contemporary directions - from construction companies to food enterprises.

Paralleling these private initiatives have been community projects to promote economic development. Early steps in this effort were the "Tribal Trading Post, " a small retail operation housed at ASHAI which features Native products for sale, and the Abenaki Tribal Museum, which is certainly an important draw for visitors to the area who want to get a sense of who we are.
Several years ago, ASHAI obtained seed money to develop a prototype "natural beverage product," to be manufactured and sold by community members. Partners included UVM and other organizations. The goal was to create a business that would give us more control over our economic options and to create jobs. The project was envisioned in terms of three phases. Phase one, a feasibility study, was completed and indicated that developing manufacturing capacity was, in fact, quite doable. Phase two was a marketing study and that also produced quite promising results. Phase three involved identifying sufficient funding to actually go ahead with implementation and that phase is still pending. Our hope is that we can restart the "Bottling Project" once again in the near future. We are currently investigating financial resources for this purpose.

In October 2000 another community project began. Called the Abenaki Microenterprise Project, it is a partnership of ASHAI, the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity's Micro Business Development Program and the Women's Small Business Program at Trinity College. Funded through a grant from the USDA Rural Business Grant Program, the project is about creating self-employment opportunities for low income households in Franklin and Grand Isle Counties by supporting existing small businesses and by helping to start new ones. Services include one-on-one business technical assistance counseling, classroom trainings in marketing (including over the internet) and basic business planning, and the creation of this web site and the opportunity for small businesses to use it to promote themselves. Counselors will also assist eligible and interested businesses apply for loan monies from sources throughout the state.

The focus of the businesses identified is either 1) Native traditional livelihood enterprises or 2) any Abenaki-owned businesses. Some Abenaki already own and operate successful small businesses. Others have existing businesses they want to expand. Still others wish to take Native traditional skills honed over the years and turn them into livelihoods for the first time. All are welcome

This website was funded through a Rural Business Enterprise Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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