- September 30, 2021
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Business
WINDOW ROCK
Even though hemp is now legal in the United States, it is still banned on the Navajo Nation, putting the kibosh on what many consider a huge economic opportunity for individual growers and the Nation as a whole.
Diné hemp producer Ira Vandever is living proof that the Nation is not only missing out on economic development opportunities but is losing families to off-reservation lands who have been forced to find ways to make a living elsewhere due to Nation’s draconian cannabis laws.
“We use hemp for fiber,” said Vandever. “We don’t grow it to smoke it or even extract the oils.”
Vandever, a former health-care administrator, restaurateur and business strategist, decided to buy a large parcel of land in Cubero, New Mexico, east of his homelands in Baca/Prewitt, so that he could set up a hemp business, Turquoise Indigo Fibers, without getting into legal trouble on Navajo.
“I was thinking of how to…
