The daughter of a South Dakota cattle rancher, Skya Ducheneaux spent her childhood in the family business on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. She left that lifestyle behind and pursued a degree in business administration from Black Hills State University while living between Spearfish and Rapid City—until she was called back home to the family ranch.
In 2019, Ducheneaux founded Attacha certified community development financial institution, or CDFIbased in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. While CDFIs are designed to serve the broad financial needs of historically underserved communities, some, like Akiptan, play a pivotal role in the agricultural landscape, providing much-needed financial and technical support to food producers.
While there are over 1,400 CDFIs in the U.S., Akiptan is one of only 65 that are focused on serving Native Americans. It has distributed more than $16 million in capital through almost 240 loans across 24 nations for projects over the last three years—including Morning Light Kombuchaa company focused on sustainable practices in Kansas, and Sakari Farmsan operation that specializes in growing first foods and expanding research-based tribal seed production in Oregon—and its work is just getting started.
Akiptan’s 2022 market study determined that nearly three-quarters of the farmers they spoke to needed additional capital to purchase new equipment or infrastructure, but most don’t have access to CDFI loans, which accounted for only 9 percent of all the capital they raised.
The Native CDFI Network found that 86 percent of Indigenous communities lacked a single financial institution to access loans or capital within their borders. One of the network’s 2023 Policy Priorities focuses on increasing the flow of capital and subsidies to farmers and ranchers through the farm bill. The hope is to create a CDFI pilot program.
The “2022 Gaining Ground Report,” authored by the Native Farm Bill Coalition (NFBC), is also advocating for “creative flexibilities” that would enable Native CDFIs to “expand their agricultural lending and provide those key lines of credit that improve Native food economies and support rural America.”
Akiptan was one of three lenders named as a part of the Farm Service Agency’s Heirs’ Property Relending Program last August. Authorized as a 2018 Farm Bill provision, the program strives to address entrenched agricultural inequities by targeting the status of fractionated lands among Black and Indigenous farmers.
Farm Service Agency Administrator Zach Ducheneaux, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a relative of Skya’s who helped her create Akiptan, told Civil Eats that “there isn’t enough funding in the CDFI sector, let alone the Native CDFI sector, that is structured like an investment that really lets the money go out there to work.”
Skya Ducheneaux spoke with Civil Eats recently about Akiptan, her hopes for the 2023 Farm Bill, and the importance of funding for Native American food producers.
How did your childhood on the ranch inspire you to get involved in agriculture?
My dad ranched with his dad, who ranched with his dad. Everybody in my family was expected to help. And even though I’m a girl, my dad very much raised me so that I can do the same thing as every man in my life. I was out there all day with him—from sunup to sundown, before school and after school. It’s tough; ranching is hard work.
I was chasing cows, pulling calves, fixing tractors. Then, when I turned 18, I never wanted to work that hard again. I said, “I’m going to get a business degree. It’s getting me off the ranch, out of the hay field.” I went to college and I started missing agriculture, never the work but the good-natured, honest people.
After I graduated, I wanted to move back home, which is funny because just a few years prior I couldn’t get far enough away. The Intertribal Agriculture Council caught wind of the fact that I was trying to move home and they offered me a position to start this CDFI.
I didn’t know what a CDFI was, so there was a huge learning curve, but I haven’t looked back. And I’m a fair-weather cowgirl these days.
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