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With oil, gas and coal revenues continuing to fall, the Navajo Nation is looking for ways to diversify its economy.

Lance Morgan, the CEO of Ho-Chunk, Inc., provided tribal business owners and politicians some suggestions on how the Winnebago Tribe in Nebraska added to their economy at the sixth annual Navajo Economic Summit at Twin Arrows Casino and Resort Tuesday. More than 600 people registered for the summit.

Morgan said the Winnebago Tribe started off like many other American Indian tribes with a small casino in the early 1990s. But when a huge new casino was built about 80 miles away, the tribe saw a significant drop in revenue. But the tribe didn’t have natural resources such as coal, gas or oil that it could exploit.

The tribal council turned to its attorney Morgan, who is a member of the tribe, for ideas. They gave him about $9.7 million in profits from the casino to come up with a plan to make the tribe self-sufficient. He created Ho-Chunk, Inc. which is owned by the tribe and now has businesses located in 21 different states and nine different countries. It is the largest business owned by the tribe.

He used some of the first money the tribe gave him to purchase a small modular home manufacturer in Minnesota. Then created a construction business on the reservation to build the homes locally.