Tocabe Indigenous Marketplace, an online shop featuring 40 products from native and indigenous makers, has gone live this week, report The New York Times. The marketplace was founded by Denver-based Matt Chandra and Ben Jacobs, who also founded Tocabe, an American Indian restaurant with two locations in the area.
Chandra and Jacobs came up with the idea from the online marketplace last May, when they realized they could leverage their existing relationships with suppliers to build “an economy that can keep money within Indian country,” according to Jacobs, who is a member of the Osage Nation of Northeast Oklahoma.
Product offerings include maple syrup from Minogin Market in Mackinaw City, Michigan, and tepary beans from Ramona Farms in Sacaton, Arizona. Eventually, the marketplace will carry frozen meals.
For every two items sold, Tocabe will donate one item to a Native community organization.
“Too many Native and Indigenous producers have been excluded from the supply chains that would enable them to sell at a national level, and producers are too often bypassed by distributors and shipping routes,” said Jacobs.
However, the goal is not to mass commercialize the products and traditions of indigenous people, noted Jacobs, but rather highlight them.
“If we don’t tell the stories and claim these things as our own,” Mr. Jacobs said, “then they are just going to be taken again.” Full Story
Related: Sioux Chef Restaurant to Open This Spring; Bryon White, Yaupon Brothers American Tea Co., Wins Leadership Award for Citizenship.
Image: Tocabe Indigenous Marketplace