Outlet profile

Tribal Business News

U.S. Indigenous-interest business press

Owned byIndian Country Media, LLC (parent company, also owner of Native News Online), operated in partnership with MiBiz Inc., a regional business publisher based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Founded by Levi Rickert, a citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.

FundingHybrid model: paid subscriptions (paywalled website and daily e-newsletter), digital advertising, sponsored content packages, and marketing partnerships. Discounted rates are offered to tribes and Native-serving nonprofits.

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

Tribal Business News launched on October 1, 2020, as a sister publication to Native News Online, itself founded by Levi Rickert, a Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation citizen and veteran Native American journalist. The outlet grew out of a formal partnership between Indian Country Media, LLC and MiBiz Inc., a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based regional business media company, with the stated goal of providing dedicated business journalism for what organizers described as a $130 billion Indigenous economy that was largely underserved by mainstream financial press. Managing editor Joe Boomgaard, who had covered tribal economic development for more than fifteen years, led the editorial operation. The publication operates as a subscription-first digital outlet, combining paywalled long-form reporting, a daily e-newsletter, and sponsored content to support its revenue model. Its editorial scope covers tribal enterprise, Indigenous entrepreneurship, gaming, energy, federal contracting, and policy affecting Indian Country economies. The outlet does not hold nonprofit status and describes itself as a business news service rather than an advocacy publication, though its subject matter and sourcing are rooted in tribal and Indigenous perspectives. Coverage of the Trump administration's second term has consistently highlighted budget proposals cutting Bureau of Indian Affairs funding by roughly 24 percent, the termination of more than $2 billion in clean energy grants to tribes, and reports of illegally blocked federal payments to Native communities — giving the outlet a broadly critical orientation toward current federal Indian policy.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-08-21; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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