| Ho-Chunk, Inc.: Press release |
Return To Press Area Contents12.15.10
Ho-Chunk Creates Own Opportunities To Benefit Tribal Members
WINNEBAGO, Neb. (KTIV NBC) - Here's a closer look at Winnebago, Nebraska's Ho-Chunk Incorporated.
In 16 years time Ho-Chunk Inc., Winnebago Tribe's economic development corporation, has turned themselves into a major league business.
They owe a large part of that success to government contracts.
"We wouldn't be getting them if we weren't doing a good job," says Ho-Chunk CEO Lance Morgan.
Most recently one of the company's subsidiaries has signed on to help the US Small Business Administration in D.C. with information technology. They'll be assisting in setting up computers, building the administration's tech infrastructure.
"I think it's a testament to how good of a job we are doing that the SBA themselves hired us to do some of their work," says Morgan.
But IT is just a small part of Ho-Chunk Inc.'s.
They're international with 18 total subsidiaries in fields from construction to retail.
Ho-Chunk has nearly 1,400 employees and offices across the country and the globe.
"It used to be that we lived in such poverty as a community that it was hard to imagine a sort of international corporation," says Morgan.
But now there're doing it. In fact, Ho-Chunk says when they started with one employee in 1994 unemployment was at 65% in Winnebago. Through their development of local business, commercialism, housing projects and gambling, that number has dropped more than 60% and keeps falling.
"We can hire more people create more jobs send more kids to school build more homes, you name it," says Morgan.
The biggest badge on Ho-Chunk's jacket though, is that they have become a major business while being owned by the Winnebago Tribe, and managed by Native Americans.
"What we are doing is providing for ourselves, making our own opportunities and counting on ourselves and I have no doubt that is the way we need to approach it," says Morgan.
Officials with Ho-Chunk say they that the recent $18.9 million dollar government contract isn't their largest. In the past they've signed for close to $50 million dollars.
Online Reporter: Forrest Saunders - KTIV NBC Sioux City, IA
