We’ve been thinking about how strategies in rural areas are being (re)framed with culture bearers, growers and makers in mind. The approaches of First People’s Fund and Region Five Development also bridge critical divides — social, cultural, financial and geographic. Lori Pourier of The First People’s Fund/Rolling Rez is based out of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which is essentially the homeland of the Oglala Lakota Reservation. The arrangement between the tribe and the government was formed though two treaties with the US Government, and has formed an arrangement, with some uneven results, that impacts education, health care, and other areas that drive the regional economy even today.

The goal of economic development is to improve the economic well-being of a place – usually a city, state or region. Economic development often sits on the ‘demand’ side of the labor market – building stronger economies that lead to employment opportunities in the private, public and nonprofit sectors (Siegel and Seidman, 2009). It can be informed by many levels of society – there are policies and funding streams coming from the federal, state, regional, local and neighborhood levels as well as anchor institutions and foundations contributing to the economic health of communities every day. And the people responsible for economic development in a place tend to focus on creating jobs, building infrastructure, and creating economic growth.

When asked to speak in public, I often turn to my family for inspiration and colorful anecdotes to share. I turn to these stories because they helped to inform my earliest comprehension of some really big ideas, like safety, abundance, community, and love. Reflecting on my experience growing up in rural Mississippi allows me to relate an amorphous word, like education, and place it a tangible context. So, when asked to write about economic development, by the wonderful folks at ArtPlace, I began thinking about a story to make it real for me so that I can translate it into the real word.

When a friend visiting from Philadelphia compared Whitesburg, Kentucky, to Stars Hollow, all she got from us was a blank stare. Turns out Stars Hollow is the setting of Gilmore Girls : a small idyllic town, rural and intimate, yet diverse and open-minded. When our friend arrived in Whitesburg—a former coal-mining town in one of the poorest and sickest Congressional districts in the country—she thought such a place could exist only on TV. Twenty-four hours later, she had changed her mind.