Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Cherokee Small-Business Owners and the Making of Economic Sovereignty by Courtney Lewis (review)

as a result of settler-colonial structures of domination and exclusion, Indigenous peoples have been unfailingly oppressed over decades, becoming minority groups that are subject to sociopolitical and economic barriers. Indigenous entrepreneurship has been seen as a route by which Indigenous peoples can reassert themselves in society and challenge historical discriminatory economic arrangements. During the last decade, Indigenous entrepreneurship has powerfully emerged as a research field, presenting Indigenous entrepreneurship as an opportunity to create vibrant Indigenous-led economies that foster sustainable economic growth and well-being. While most academic endeavors focus almost exclusively on large Indigenous-owned and -run businesses, especially casinos, little has been studied from an ethnographic perspective regarding the impact Indian small businesses have on Indigenous communities and the roles those businesses play in those communities. Sovereign Entrepreneurs aims to fill that gap.

Courtney Lewis provides an in-depth, ethnographically based analysis of individual small-business ownership and entrepreneurship by Cherokee citizens on the Qualla Boundary. Lewis's research, framed by the height of the Great Recession, unpacks the relevance small businesses have on reservations in terms of their contribution to the diversification, strengthening, and stability of Indian economies, especially those that are dominated by one industry and undergo times of economic upheaval.

The book is divided into five chapters, excluding the introduction and conclusion. The introduction presents the definition of "economic sovereignty," the leading concept throughout the book, understood as "the ability to exercise autonomy in economic decision-making" (14). In the case of the Cherokee on the Qualla Boundary, economic sovereignty is supported not only by the government of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) but also, as discussed in the following chapters, by individuals themselves. Chapter 1 develops two main ideas: Lewis's understanding of what Indigenous entrepreneurship constitutes, and the characterization of the owners of small businesses on the Qualla Boundary. While revealing that these businesses are usually sheltered within the family bosom, Lewis also discusses "mismatch perceptions," by which American Indian economic identities are tangled by neoliberal structures.

Chapter 2 discusses the importance of the tourist industry for the Cherokee and how it influences sovereign economic practices. Relevant topics examined here include identity representation, expectations of authenticity, and the ways in which small businesses respond to these questions and exercise their economic sovereignty while negotiating the tourist demand at the same time. Chapter 3 examines the difficulties both the EBCI and small-business owners have to navigate in terms of land, citizenship, and representation boundaries and the resulting consequences for economic sovereignty, given varied external obstacles for its execution. Taking a political-economic perspective, chapter 4 discusses the relevance of a stable economy to develop practices of political sovereignty. By generating employment, easing the dependency on Native nation governments, and disbanding Indian-related stereotypes, small businesses play a crucial role in diversifying the economy beyond the direct services provided by the two casinos owned by the EBCI. Chapter 5 focuses on the particular difficulties small businesses face on reservations and the support programs offered by the EBCI to encourage Cherokee entrepreneurship ventures to promote the general health of the Qualla Boundary economy.

Despite the monograph's strengths, three shortcomings are evident. First, the book is not positioned within a broader set of literature on Indigenous entrepreneurship practices, which would have helped to develop a more precise theoretical framework on which to base the book. Similarly, the text would have benefited from an introductory section presenting the context, both historical and contemporary, of the Cherokee on the Qualla Boundary. Given that Indigenous entrepreneurship is increasingly becoming a relevant topic worldwide, this contextualization would have offered possible parallels with the global trends that have influenced the design, structure, and operation of Indigenous entrepreneurial ventures both within and beyond the North American context.

Second, given that Lewis's work is based on firsthand experiences as a Cherokee citizen, a reflection on the author's positionality would have been...