Henry Ford on Indigenous Wealth: A Conversation About Making and Owning

Interviewer: Mr Ford, you’ve been called a man who built an empire by defying government, financiers, and even your own shareholders. What would you tell Indigenous nations trying to build wealth today?

Ford: I’d tell them the same thing I told my engineers — stop waiting for permission.
If you want to own something, make something. You can’t legislate ownership; you have to manufacture it.

Interviewer: But these nations were dispossessed. The State took their land and resources. Doesn’t the State owe a return?

Ford: The State owes a fair start, yes — land, capital, access to markets. But after that, get it out of the way.
Every time government tries to manage enterprise, it gums up the works.

I never met a bureaucrat who could build a gearbox.

Interviewer: Yet your company grew rich from public infrastructure — the highways, the military contracts, even wartime production.

Ford: (smiles) Sure. A business uses the world as it finds it.
I didn’t build the roads, but I built the cars that made them necessary. Government followed demand.

That’s the difference: business creates movement; government paves behind it.

Interviewer: So you’d have Indigenous nations start with private enterprise, not public programs?

Ford: Exactly. Enterprise first, policy later.
You can own a thousand acres and still be poor if you don’t make something from them.
Start small: milling, energy, fabrication, logistics. Use what’s around you.

And for heaven’s sake, keep the books straight. Capital dies of confusion faster than of risk.

Interviewer: But what about failure? Many government-purchased farms and community businesses have lost money.

Ford: Because they were built to spend, not to sell.
They aimed to demonstrate fairness, not profit. That’s the fatal mistake.

A plant that never turns a profit isn’t a business — it’s a monument.

Interviewer: You make it sound ruthless.

Ford: It’s not ruthless; it’s reality.
When you earn your own capital, you get to decide what matters — jobs, wages, social purpose. When someone else funds you, they decide.

If Indigenous nations want sovereignty, start with cash flow. Independence without revenue is decoration.

Interviewer: Still, you benefited from a stable state — regulation, contracts, public trust.

Ford: Of course I did. Every capitalist needs a working society. Roads, law, currency — those are the floor. But you don’t get rich standing on the floor; you get rich building above it.

Government should provide stability, not strategy.

Interviewer: And you think the dispossessed can build wealth that way?

Ford: They’ll have to. No one ever got free by waiting for perfect fairness.
If the door doesn’t open, make your own.

Interviewer: Final thought?

Ford: Wealth isn’t a right. It’s a rhythm — produce, sell, reinvest.
The first car was a gamble; the hundredth paid for the factory.
That’s how you build independence — one working engine at a time.

Sebastian Vanderzeil is Director of Strabo Rivers, an economic consultancy specialising in infrastructure, water, and investment strategy. This essay reimagines a conversation with Henry Ford about enterprise, risk, and the uneasy partnership between markets and the State.