Oklahoma’s first Native American-owned brewing company, inspired by the recipes of the owner’s father, will open an independent location this summer.
SkyDance Brewing Co., owned and operated by Jacob Keyes, a member of the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma, opened in 2018 when Keyes started the business in honor of his father. The company has been operating out of a co-op — a single location where multiple brewing companies use the same equipment — in Oklahoma City, but will move to an independent location.
This story was reported by Gaylord News, a Washington reporting project of the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.
Keyes and his father had always wanted to open their own brewery. One day, Keyes found a beer recipe of his dad’s and made it. His friends insisted he enter it in a competition, which he won. The evening Keyes won the competition, his brother called him to say their father had died.
“I felt like it was a sign I had to start the brewery,” Keyes said.
Keyes is from Purcell and has been involved with the Iowa Nation since he was young. Before starting the brewery, he worked in the casino industry.
“If it wasn’t for the work I did in the gaming industry, I would not have seen all these Native Americans owning and operating their own businesses. It really helped encourage me to do the same,” Keyes said.
Keyes said he had some mental hurdles to jump over before he could fully commit to opening his own business.
“We’re told that (…) Native Americans aren’t meant to participate in the business world,” he said. “We need to overcome that mindset. I had to.”
Throughout the pandemic, SkyDance Brewing Co. has experienced challenges, Keyes said. It soon became an issue of no longer being able to interact with customers directly.
“We have to sell all our beer through a bunch of middlemen, now,” Keyes said. “We’ve taken a direct hit to our profits.”
While building the independent location in Oklahoma City became even more difficult, the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce offered some loans and grants to small businesses facing challenges during the pandemic.
“Minority businesses were some of the ones hit the hardest when the pandemic began,” said Eric Long, research economist of the OKC Chamber. “Small businesses were hit especially hard.”
SkyDance Brewing Co. currently offers five beer flavors, along with a few select “seasonal” beers such as “Sovereign Nation,” inspired by the process of the United States recognizing tribes as sovereign nations. The beer is distributed to gas stations and small bars in the Oklahoma City area.
“Small business is really frail,” said Jeff Seymour, executive vice president of the OKC Chamber. “We need to help small businesses be more flexible, nimble, and reactive in times like this.”
Assistance was provided to businesses with 25 or fewer employees, with a majority of owners being racial minorities.
Native American-owned businesses and tribes have provided a significant amount of economic product in Oklahoma in the past several years, according to an Oklahoma City University study. In 2017, tribes provided $12.9 billion dollars in goods and services to Oklahoma, up from $10.8 billion in 2011.
Native American-owned businesses provide 96,177 jobs in Oklahoma, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
Keyes said most of his support comes from Native American-based resources.
“I got a loan from the Bureau of Indian Affairs long before I could get a (…) state loan,” he said. “All the other loans I applied for were put on holds, but this one came quickly and helped the most.”
Despite the challenges faced over the past year by all businesses, Keyes is excited about the future.
“When we open this new location, we’ll have a showroom for Native American art,” he said. “A lot of our beers will be named after (Native American) dances, too. This is our chance to teach people about our culture.”
