Winnebago Tribe member Lance Morgan, founder of the $95 million tribe-run corporation Ho-Chunk, Inc, has been featured in Fortune magazine and dubbed by Inc. magazine as among “America’s 25 most fascinating entrepreneurs.” He’s also the force behind the design and development of a pedestrian-friendly, New Urbanist-style village on a reservation where 70% of people are overweight.
Morgan acknowledges that health issues such as diabetes and obesity disproportionately affect Native Americans and present one of his community’s greatest challenges. He also sees that this is a problem that can be solved. “We just need to be health-oriented,” says Morgan. “This is not some great giant innovation of genius. It simply just makes sense.”
On getting started:
“I met Kate Kraft from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She recommended that I read a book Suburban Nation that talks about urban planning and that kind of stuff. And I thought that the dense environment really was helpful on the infrastructure-cost side, and…it was a great idea to deal with some of our health issues. So it went from ‘never heard of it,’ to ‘hey this is interesting,’ to ‘this makes a lot of sense.’”
Health problems are the driver:
The number one issue is diabetes, and everything else relates to that almost. And diabetes, for the Native-American population, is really almost a genetic issue. We’re very predisposed to obesity and our problem with diabetes.”
“Seamless” Active Living:
“Really what we’d hoped it would do would change mindsets. What I don’t need is somebody to say, ‘Boy, I’m going to have to get up and walk there’ and make the conscious decision. What we want it to be is integrated in so that you don’t even have to think about it. So it just really becomes part of your routine. I’ll just walk down there and get that—you know that kind of thing. The best answer would be that if it was seamless, you didn’t notice it. Not everybody is going to go to the gym…Even if you wanted to walk somewhere [now] it’s almost impossible, and certainly it’s dangerous. What we thought we would do is set up a community where it was easy, and actually socially acceptable [to walk] and no one felt sorry for you.
If you’re walking down the highway here now people will pick you up because that’s more our style, ‘hey they need a ride.’ But if there’s a community where walking is the normal pattern, even if you just walked a mile extra a day, then I think that’s a lot for some people here.”
It’s not how much you spend, but where you spend it:
“We only have so much money for infrastructure. So putting the houses closer together helps the New Urbanism, but also helps for getting us the sheer number of houses that we need, spreading the money out among a number of units. That’s controversial because people’s goal here has been more from living close together in a community network to getting away from everybody else…We’ve developed this kind of mindset that we don’t want to have neighbors, because if you’re living in these kind of rural ghettos you don’t want to be there anyway…The trick for us is to create standards and create a neighborhood that is desirable enough and has the amenities to get people to want to live in that environment, to change their mindset.”
Creating a model for others to replicate:
“Everybody else is kind of at the micro level, the building level, the housing complex level—‘we need this kind of entrepreneur-building’ or ‘we need this particular business.’ Nobody has stepped back really and said ‘hey, let’s design a community where we really have a chance to make it our own.’ What’s typically done on this reservation is that you have money that becomes available and you want to build a building and we say, well, where should we stick it? And that’s why you have these random, disjointed communities on reservations where walking really isn’t possible. So when people come and see this, just the fact that they come and see it makes it obvious to them that they should be doing the same thing.”
Active Living is profitable:
“I run a corporation, you know, and my job isn’t really to design innovative communities, my job is to develop this company, create jobs and make the tribe self-sufficient. I realized, to be honest, that we really had to develop our community in order to be successful.”
Lessons learned:
“Think big but work small. You’ve got to really think big. And set some big goals. Then work like the dickens on the little things to make them happen. And everything else will gain momentum.”
A visionary tribe member on why he’s building a walkable village on the Winnebago Reservation
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Additional Links
Fact Sheet on Native American Health
Behind the Scenes
