The Montana Co-op Development Center is doing important and groundbreaking work on Montana reservations.
Tracy Mcintyre the Executive Director for the Montana Co-Op Development Center explains what they’re working on.
“We’re in process right now of creating one of the first co-ops on tribal land.”-Tracy Mcintyre
Tracy continues to explain the process of generating co-ops on the reservations.
“The first effort was over in Fort Belknap, the Red Paint Creek Trading Post. They went through the whole co-op process and moved forward, but they still got identified as a foreign non-profit. They are now considered a non-profit entity in the state of Montana and their evolution really opened up our need to understand better how this works. So, from that process our office actually worked with the Native American Development Corporation and the law clinic there in Missoula. They did a study for us to really identify was there anything from the cooperative movement and state laws that would interfere or not be compatible with any of the tribal laws, and what we found out during that study is that there was no reason why we couldn’t be doing cooperative development work. There were no tribal laws that would impact or cause any issues. So that was a good first step, and then from there we brought on our coordinators and they both focused and made sure that they visited almost every tribal reservation in the state of Montana. So that was just letting people know, hey we can do this here.” -Tracy Mcintyre
Overall, Tracy hopes that the cooperatives benefit the tribal communities as they would any other, through allowing for personalized solutions.
“They too are just like any other rural community they want to find these local solutions. They’re like hey we could do this ourselves, let’s figure this out, let’s create something that actually benefits us and it’s in our voice and they get to incorporate their needs and really find solutions that work for them. I think that’s just what’s so beautiful about the whole process.” -Tracy Mcintyre
