NAB Provides Innovative Loan that Will Create 500 Jobs in Ten Native Communities
November 11, 2003

Denver, CO -- Native American Bank N.A. (NAB) announced today that they have established a $1 million line of credit that will provide financing for a multi-tribally-owned business and ten Native firms as they implement $50 million in Federal contracts with the Department of Defense (DOD).

Intertribal Information Technology Company (IITC), the recipient of the loan, has been contracted to digitize technical manuals for the DOD. The contract will both improve military readiness and create over 500 information technology jobs in ten reservations, Alaska Native Village and Native Hawaiian communities. The benefit of information technology is that many tasks can be performed in remote locations, so tribal members can stay at home and still be part of a national contract that pays well and has great upward mobility.

"This is a landmark for Native owned businesses," said NAB chairman Tex Hall, who also serves as president of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). "It's the reason a group of tribes pooled their resources and created Native American Bank, to be an engine for reservation development and to make the innovative kinds of loans that Indian country needs but that the non-Indian banks have never been willing to make."

IITC is comprised of information technology firms owned by seven different tribes, two Alaska Native Corporations and one Native Hawaiian non-profit organization. (An eleventh owner is the Intertribal Economic Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for reservation economic development.) The company is headquartered in Anchorage with executive offices in Washington D.C. It is the first multi-tribal 8(a) firm and the first business that is jointly owned by tribes, Alaska Native Corporations and Native Hawaiians.

The actual digitizing work will be subcontracted to ten Native IT firms whose employees will perform the work in their Native communities, almost all of which are in remote locations and suffer from unemployment rates in excess of 50%. IITC will provide overall contract administration and quality control under the contracts and technical assistance to the subcontractors.

The contract was made possible by funds added to the Defense Appropriations Act in fiscal years '03 and '04 by Senators Inouye and Stevens. The Senators recognized that the DOD needs to convert its technical manuals from paper to intelligent electronic format and that the digitization work could be performed in remote Native communities by the growing pool of Native Americans with training in information technology.

"I would like to thank Senators Inouye and Stevens for their great commitment to Indian job creation," said Chairman Hall. "Without their leadership, this project and this loan would never have occurred. I also would like to thank the BIA for providing a loan guarantee and sharing in NAB's goal of developing creative ways to create jobs in Native communities."

"This loan is timely and innovative,"said IITC President Kecia Reyes, "As a startup company, neither IITC nor many of our tribal firms that are our subcontractor could have financed the first few months of operation without the loan. NAB was very helpful and was willing to work with us through every step of the loan process. They recognized that this contract was breaking new ground in creating jobs in impoverished remote Native communities and they worked with us to structure a loan that meets our needs."

Zuni Technologies Inc. (ZTI), owned by the Zuni Tribe, is one of the ten tribal IT firms that will be a subcontractor on the digitizing contract. IITC will advance funds from its NAB loan to ZTI to cover its start-up costs. "This may be the first loan that will help to create jobs in ten different Native communities with high unemployment," said Darlynn Panteah, CEO, Zuni Technologies Inc. " I appreciate what NAB has done and ZTI will soon be contacting NAB to move our banking activities to this multi-tribally owned bank."

"This is the most creative loan that I have worked on in my twenty-seven years in banking" recalled to Pam Nesius, Vice President and Team Leader at NAB. "The borrower is a new enterprise. The program is a new project. We were really creating it as we went along. But after six months of hard work from the entire team - BIA, attorneys, DOD and the Native American contractors and their mentors - this has become a most satisfying reality."