Well-informed policy and business decisions depend on trustworthy data.

State and metro leaders can turn to scores of regularly updated sources (barring a government shutdown) from the U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics and other federal agencies. Tribal nations have never been able to count on the same level of data, though.

The Center for Indian Country Development at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve has spent 10 years working to fill those gaps.

At a celebration this week of the center’s first decade, policymakers, business owners and tribal advocates emphasized the importance of having access to the socioeconomic data collected by the research institute.

“We employ a lot of people, we have taken people off the welfare rolls, and we have provided scholarship job training,” said

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