Native American Cultural Products for Economic Development

This project will assess whether an economic development concept of Native American cultural products can open new opportunities for rural residents. The project will work with a set of isolated rural Alaska Native villages with whom we have established working relationships, to obtain prototypes, define parameters of production, and get design examples attuned to the feedback from potential purchasers. The project builds on the long-cherished desire to make the riches of Native culture, an effective economic development tool. "Cultural products" are items that use traditional Native cultural skills to make innovative products that fit into the modern lifestyle. This pradigm has been researched into a set of potential products, targeted to the office-products industry, to ecological and other advocacy markets, and to execute gift markets (including preliminary conversation with Alaska Center for International Business to address the Japanese gift market.) Working relationships have been established with regional Native organizations as well, to provide the linkages needed to expand capacity in case of major success. This has proven a key weakness of Alaska business development.