Howard Frederick

Although I know that this is a paper about enterprising communities and the different cultural factors that are involved, I wasnʻt sure if I should be offended overall. When I first scanned through it seemed like the paper was saying "despite their cultures, these indigenous groups of people can be taught and can be successful!" Its offensive. True, many cultures have come back and progressed after suffering through economic and social dislocation and wrongdoings. And thats something to be proud of! But how some people view indigenous cultures is so wrong. Some white people view indigenous cultures as being behind their own, when thats completely false. Colonizers were so intent on de-colonizing and making indigenous cultures like their own that they failed to realize that the cultures they were trying to take over were far more advanced than their own.

Moving on to the first part of the actual article, I have to agree with a few of the barriers mentioned by the European commission. Living in Hawaii, naturally most native people have family and financial burdens. Hawaiʻi also has a high rate of people on welfare, and a high rate of jobless people. Cultural differences are somewhat a problem here also. The problem being that living in Hawaiʻi is hard because a lot of the jobs that we have available are tourism based, so visitors to Hawaiʻi get the idea that the natives exist to serve. Its also hard to get jobs because a lot of mainland companies come here and hire mainland contractors to build their buildings and some restaurants even bring in people from the mainland to work here! (ex:Walgreens/cvs)

As for the Maori article on indigenous entrepreneurship, I agree with what was said about how in order to have successful Maori-benefitting entrepreneurships they need to be further developed in terms of accountability beyond social and economic entrepreneurial thinking. I find it strange that entrepreneurship has a negative influence on Maori society. Shouldʻnt they embrace new things and support the younger generations for wanting to own and run their own business? But I can also see how social and individual challenges may come into play. Families would not approve of their child being an entrepreneur when it involves taking greater risks than normal.

Iʻm not too sure about how I feel about the TOMM model. I do agree that it needs to be tweaked and have more indigenous influence. I like how its stated that: "careful implementation of the above model may assist the Chatham Islands to develop a socially and economically sustainable community." Were the Chatham islands not perfectly sustainable before colonists came? They were hunters and gatherers and fishermen. Indigenous people are not helpless people. "Economic development through the introduction of a co-ordinated community supported tourism plan is one way that the Islanders could secure their future." In other words let tourism "save" (rule) your culture.

I feel like all indigenous people will always be fighting a battle. A battle to push through and be successful besides all negative odds.