A group of local, small business owners participate May 7, 2024, in a Native Empower Hour event at Hamley & Co. Western Store in Pendleton.

PENDLETON — Jacob Wallis said building connections is essential to promoting the small business ecosystem within and between the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Pendleton.

Wallis is the business service manager with Nixyaawii Community Financial Services on the reservation, and building those connections inspired him to start Native Empower Hour, a networking enterprise to create and strengthen relationships between Native and non-Native businesspeople.

The upcoming Native Empower Hour takes the form of a joint small business block party 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 29, with the Pendleton Chamber of Commerce’s Kick It Up After 5 event at 501 S. Main St.

“It is tailored towards more of a small business thought process and that networking component,” Wallis said of the event. “But this one’s a little bit different from the ones we’ve done in the past because the hope is it doesn’t seem so awkward or formal.”

By having networking occur side by side with shopping and sharing food or drinks, Wallis said he hopes people will feel more comfortable. He also said parenting with the chamber of commerce can be especially beneficial to bridging the gap between businesses within the tribes and businesses in Pendleton.

“The biggest thing is de-siloing our economic strategy, de-siloing our industries out here,” Wallis said. “It’s usually connections with people that end up making a business and it’s easy to forget that.”

The event should give the business community a chance to network in a casual context, he said. There also will be a raffle for attendees, a DJ and vendors from the tribes as well as Pendleton.

Sharing knowledge and skills isn’t as common in rural business communities as others, Wallis said.

“We tend to keep to ourselves for multiple different reasons,” he said. “There’s this thought process of, ‘They can’t coexist,’ even though that’s absolutely wrong.”

The Native Empower Hour happens monthly, and although it began as a way to connect Indigenous small businesses, Wallis said he soon realized that offering a bridge between the tribes and the Pendleton business community would be good for everyone and help everyone involved.

“We’re all in this together,” he said. “These two communities have to leverage each other and it doesn’t matter if you’re big or small.”

While Native Power Hour is open to the public, the event is geared toward the business community. People interested in participating can sign up on the NCFS website, www.nixyaawii-cdfi.org, to attend or work the event as a vendor.