[MUSIC PLAYING] My name is Yasmine Chinwala. I'm a journalist working with a portrait photographer, James Stroud, on an article about businesses that are flourishing in places that you really wouldn't expect. We only have two days to find out what makes each company so unique and successful. And the second stop on our search has brought us to South Dakota, the homeland of the Lakota Indian tribe. As a photographer, you're always seeing the world as potential pictures. The first thing that strikes you about the reservation is its remoteness. How anyone can run a business from here is remarkable. The company we're here to write about is called Native American Natural Foods. They're the first company from a native reservation to create a national brand. And to do so, they've gone right back to their roots using traditional Native recipes in snack food production. Their first product is called the Tanka Bar, and it was inspired by wasna, a traditional recipe which mixed buffalo and cranberries. And no one expected it to take off in the way that it has. Co-founder Karlene Hunter is a Lakota woman who grew up here on the reservation. Oglala Lakotas were placed on the reservation a little over 100 years ago. Our whole total society was taken away-- our language, our spirituality, our economy. When you look at economic development, it's hard for someone to imagine what can be when they're told, this is how you will do it. JC, my man. JC just graduated. We're really proud of him. Congratulations. He's going on to college, right? Yeah. Yes. We began the concept about five years ago, and we were talking about building a private sector. We were trying to get people to understand what that meant, so we have decided, OK, we've got to show people it can be done. Just look straight to me. Keep looking straight in. Just looking straight to me. Fantastic. The other co-founder of Native American Natural Foods, Mark Tilsen, has been working for 25 years to bring economic stability to the area. And it's a huge challenge for me to capture that kind of dedication in a single photograph. Just let your arms by your side. Do you feel like "catalog man"? OK, now just stand completely straight. We try to take as much of the positive things are happening in the Native community and share that along with our brand because that's really our message. There are positive solutions. We can get stuck on the disease and the poverty and a lot of problems, but if we can stay focused on solutions, we can keep moving forward. And that's really what we're trying to do here. Social benefits aside, Mark and Karlene still have to run a business. And if they want to create even more jobs, that business has to grow. With partner Frohling Meats, Mark is working on a new range of 100% natural products that make use of their Native buffalo including the Tanka Dog and the Tanka Wild Indian Summer Sausage. So this is the natural occurring nitrate that is in vegetables, so it actually cures the meat. And what's the feedback been thus far? People love it. It tastes awesome. It's well documented if we can get people to return to more traditionally based foods, less processed foods, we can reduce the prevalence of diabetes and obesity. Each step we've tried to get as much input from Native youth as possible, because we know they're not going to eat this because we tell them that it's good for you, eat it. Otherwise, we'd already solved the problem. The Native youth are getting involved with more than just R&D. With the company's marketing strategy, they are proving necessity is the mother of invention. When we started Native American Natural Foods, they told us it was going to take 16 million to start a food company. Well, we didn't have 16 million. So once again, we get real creative. Right now we operate on multiple social networking sites-- MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Twitter. It's a new type of conversational marketing, and very cutting edge. As recently as five years ago, the majority of our people didn't even have a bank account. With our network, we're communicating with over 8,000 different people just on Twitter alone. And now with the youth and everything, we're at the point that we've got those stores open. Now we need to roll with it. We need to roll ourselves. Take the world. That's right. And we are. We're international. We're taking it over one Tanka bar at a time. Karlene's motivation comes from wanting to build a future for her daughters and granddaughters on the reservation. I wanted to photograph them together to reflect this vision. Are you worried about becoming a victim of your own success with that? You just don't have the capacity here to manage that? No. You're not worried about that? No. We have 38,000 tribally enrolled members. People ask us, will you move the company? No, we won't move the company. Would you sell? No. We will sell to the employees. It was funny when we got our loan. The banker asked me, so what's your exit strategy? Die? Karlene and Mark are not serial entrepreneurs. They're social entrepreneurs proving business can be about more than just the bottom line. And this company is just a starting point for their vision, to nurture businesses and drive economies on reservations across the. US and empower Native communities around the world. It's definitely the start of something here in Kyle, South Dakota. Karlene and Mark have got an incredible spirit and energy. I look forward to sharing these photos of them with the world. Next stop is Brazil. I can't wait to see what lies in store for us.