My name is Ray Foxworth, and I am one of the
editors of the Invisible No More book. Thank you. And before we start the panel, I just want
to say a few words about the book and the edited collection. This collection of essays began in
about 2019, when I was vice president of First Nations Development Institute, and it was born
out a few out of a few frustrations. The first frustration was my constant frustration with
philanthropy and the lack of investment that goes to Native American commun
ities. And when I
say lack of investment, what I'm talking about is the statistic that is common knowledge in
Indian Country that only about one half of 1% of philanthropic dollars go to support Native
organizations and Native causes. The book was born out of a frustration about narratives about Native
people in communities narratives that continue to exist in the minds of native of non-Native people,
of settler Americans. These are narratives that frame us as only poor and subjected people
who
are tragic victims of history and narratives that acknowledge that we are only here today to
be some kind of performance, that we exist only as beads and feathers. This book challenges
those narratives and those assumptions about Native people and provides a space for the 20
or so Native leaders featured in the book to talk about their work and their visions for
the future in their communities and for the world more broadly. Finally, I will say the book
is really about liberation. Thi
s book is rooted in the belief that Native people themselves are
best able to solve their own challenges and have the solutions to solve their community problems.
With that, I want to turn the microphone over to Greg Behrman, who is the founder and CEO of
NationSwell. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Greg Behrman. I'm the founder and CEO
of NationSwell we are an executive membership community, an advisory that supports incredible
leaders of purpose-driven organizations. We wor
k with them to help them take their impact to
the next level. I'd now like to invite our dear friend, an extraordinary leader, a human
community builder, a really special person, Dr Carmen Rojas. She will be our moderator and
our guide for this evening. We'll be in very good hands with her. Please give her a warm round
of applause. Thanks, hon. I don't need this. I could be double-miked. Hi all. Thank you so much
for coming. I feel like New York City is so cold. And for people to come out i
n the nighttime
is a big ask. I'm gonna ask Trisha, Heather, and Michael just to come up and we're gonna get
started. First and foremost, welcome. I want to be judicious with our time and also want to be
a part of the embarrassing Ray Foxworth crew. And name that Ray is not only the coeditor
of this book, but an amazing coconspirator, one of the smartest people that I've met and the
most generous people that I've met with his time since I've started this job at Marguerite Casey.
And I'm so
grateful, one, that I was one of the first people that got to read the book and
blurb the book and that we get to host this conversation. So just because I want to layer
it on you, Ray. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you all for joining us tonight for
this Marguerite Casey Foundation Book Club. For those of you guys that don't know, Marguerite
Casey Foundation hosts a series of conversations. We try to do it pretty regularly. I love a book.
And so I like to call this my scam jam
in my job, running a foundation, reading books by authors
who we believe are planting seeds for a possible future and inviting us to imagine what a
more just and liberated world would look like. And there's no better book that I can
imagine supporting than this one. My name is Dr Carmen Rojas. I'm the president and CEO of
Marguerite Casey Foundation and tonight we're going to be in conversation with three incredible
people. Trisha Kehaulani Watson, Heather Fleming, and Michael Roberts. And
so I'm going to share
a little bit about them. I wish I would have asked them, actually, what's your favorite
karaoke song? So I'm going to end with that because I like humanizing brilliant people. I’m
ready. Are you?... I got an answer. How am Ii totally not surprise. Trisha Kehaulani Watson, JD Ph.D.
was born and raised in Mānoa, Hawaii. In 2003, she became the first woman of Native Hawaiian
or Pacific Island descent to earn two doctorate degrees. Woo-woo! That's right. Try
to get one d
octorate degree, and like, let's just talk about how amazing that is. She's
founder and CEO of Honua Consulting, the largest and longest-running Hawaiian-owned cultural
resource management company in Hawaii. She's also currently chair of the National Academies
of Sciences Committee on Inclusive and Ethical and Equitable Oceans. Your karaoke song? Okay so I
do have one - karaoke is very big in Hawaii. It's going to be I would say "Faithfully," by Journey,
but when my husband sings it. So my
husband just did the protocol. He's actually a professional
singer so I totally brought a ringer into this. But we're all going out for karaoke after and
we'll make him sing. It'll be fabulous. Thank you so much for being here Trisha. Next to Trisha
is Heather Fleming, who who's the cofounder and executive director of Change Labs, an organization
supporting entrepreneurship and innovation in and around the Navajo Nation to incubate, finance,
and train Native American Social entrepreneurs i
n an effort to diversify local economies and
promote innovation. She's also the cofounder of Catapult Design—a social impact design firm—and
winner of the National DesignAward. Woo-woo! I love a winner. I love a celebrator. Heather,
was named a young global leader by the World Economic Forum and a social innovation fellow for
her work with EWB and Catapult Design. Heather, welcome. And what is your karaoke song? You
would never find me. Not even close. No, no, never. Never been. Never will.
Never been,
what a hot take! Michael, you better get it together. People have been saying that for a very
long time. And last but not least for 20 years, Michael Roberts, has served as president and
CEO of First Nations Development Institute, a 43-year-old national economic development and
economic justice organization serving Native reservation communities. Throughout his tenure,
Mike has been unflinching and, in his words, a bare knuckled advocate for philanthropy to
invest more in Nati
ve communities. When not focused on First Nations, he serves on the
boards of the Native Native Ways Federation, the National Committee of Responsive
Philanthropy, and most recently, was recruited to serve on the board of the Tides
Foundation. Thank you so much for being here, Michael. I I'm drinking beer
with Heather and watching you all. Let's give them a warm round of applause. Before we start I want to share a little bit
about Marguerite Casey Foundation. We're a private Foundation that
's working towards
a country where our government prioritizes the needs of underrepresented and underserved
communities. We are really focused on supporting the kind of organizing that shifts the balance
of power in society to those folks who've long been excluded from having it and from sharing in
its rewards and freedoms. And part of the way we do that is by bringing people together to talk
about books, because we think ideas are really central to starting to imagine a more different
fut
ure. I'm going to get started with questions. I also want to do a big thank-you to folks who
submitted questions in advance. I'll do my best to be judicious and go between my my Oprah Winfrey
and then an audience Phil Donahue for a Genxer, call. I'm going to start with you, Michael. Let's
talk about the word "invisible." And you write in the forward that you hope this book can push
back on the ambivalence and willful ignorance held by too many people about Native American
communities includ
ing many of the people who represent philanthropic institutions one way
to change this invisibility you suggest is for folks to focus on asset-based development
in solidarity with indigenous communities. What do you mean by this? Yeah, first of
all, I have to acknowledge where we are, right And I made the joke to Carmen when we met
each other tonight. I said "What you couldn't find a boarding school to hold the event in? I
was thinking the same thing. Because a church might be a close secon
d. And one of the biggest
proponents of Indian erasure in this country as well. But you know, so the soapbox comes with
me wherever I go. I've been very good at the last 20 years of trying to quote only brown
authors when I speak. But I thought because of the subject matter I should give us a nice
white-person quote to start off the day. This quote is "We birth the nation from nothing.
I mean, there was nothing here, I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, candidly there isn';t
much Native
American culture in American culture.” And this is from our friend Rick Santorum. But
I think it really captures a lot of what we're talking about as far as Natives in this country.
And a couple places to go with that . One, is First Nations did this really wonderful study
five or six years ago called "Reclaiming Native Truth." Really looking at, really hoping to
change the narrative about the way in which Americans in general view and talk about Natives.
And in order for us to change that
narrative, we first had to understand what that narrative
was. And we spent a lot of people's money, mostly philanthropy money, trying to figure that out. And
there were a couple a-ha moments, but there were very many affirming moments. And one of the big
ones was, Americans don't think about Natives at all, right? And so this question about this, this
thought about invisibility, is very prevalent when it comes to Natives, because people some people
don't even realize that we are still in
existence. So that is somewhat troubling. And so I think what
we were up against every day in our lives. I think that's the narrative that Raymond talked about
earlier. It really is the premise of this book, and it also is carried over into the foundation
community who, as you know, Ray made the comment 0.5 5/10 of 1% of philanthropic funding goes to
Native American causes. Only about half of that, less than half that goes to Native-controlled
institutions, about 23/100s of 1%. And I alway
s share with people when I named this number, that
you have to be really deliberate to get that small of a number. Right. Like this is rounding
error. So this is the Fords and the Kelloggs, and you asked me which ones I can name. I can
name you all of them who are not investing a great deal of money in Native causes. And when
you try to shame them, cajole them, whatever; they're pretty shameless. So this invisibility
pervades American society, it pervades the philanthropic community. And I
think one
of the main reasons that Indians are invisible, or a couple reasons, one is we were deliberately
made invisible when they couldn't kill us all off. They put us in places where we couldn't be seen,
in hoping that we would just die off. And then when we stayed around for a few hundred years,
inconveniently, I think our very presence flies in the face of American exceptionalism. And so it's
easier to ignore us and pretend we don't exist and to deal with the truth, the inconvenient tr
uth, of
genocide and land theft. What's one of the whys? I'm curious what you hear from foundation, from foundation leaders, you are in
the, if you are shaming or you are making the case for the need to fund Native-led, Native-controlled
organizations, what are the big excuses? Yeah, so two things one is we attempt to shame I
have discovered in being at this job for 25 years that foundations are pretty shameless. So
there's that. But there's a couple excuses. One is there's a prevalent beli
ef that Indians have
given been given a lot of resources and haven't fixed their problems yet. So an investment by
philanthropy is not going to change that. I think that's one of the biggest misses out there
and I think the other one is we just don't show up in numbers that matter. We are too small
of a population to show up on people's radar. And without a lot of examination about why
we're such a small population to begin with, which is because of colonialism in this country.
So yeah, th
ose are the two reasons of the why. All three of you guys are doing work that amplify
and lift up, that shine of light that make visible both the genius and the the promise of
Native folks. And I want to, I'd be remiss if I didn't make space at the beginning so that you
each could talk about your work. I'll start with you Trisha. So what are some of the ways that you
are highlighting Native folks in your work? So in addition to what you had in the intro, I think
probably the primary reason
I'm here is in 2017, I cofounded an organization called ‘Āina Momona,
um and that was very much that --I'm going to pile on to Ray again, very much thanks to First
Nations and Ray and others who we were, you know, we've been doing this work for decades. We came
together and it was truly their willingness to see the work we were doing, that really helped
us scale, in very powerful ways. And one of the things I just love about this organization, we
are absolutely native Hawaiian-led. Our foun
der is basically the Godfather of activism in Hawaii,
Walter Riddy, and is amazing. If you've never heard of him please Google him. But the board was
was mine, and it's all Native Hawaiian Phds. And I think part of that was to just create an entity
exactly like what just Michael just said that showed we are capable of leading, that we would
not be ignored, that we needed to be seen. And I think the most powerful thing we've done as an
organization is probably three things. One, we're probab
ly the loudest and showing up for numbers.
I was smart enough to hire smart millennials, so they've taken over our social media. So if you
are looking for Native Hawaiians we're probably the most prominent of the messaging entities.
So I think that's made us seen. Two, as an organization and just really focusing on hiring
native Hawaiians and uplifting. Some of the most powerful things we do is our staff are we like
fairly recently, some are off public assistance for the first time in their
lives and sort of just
investing in our own Community thanks to support from entities like First Nations. And then third,
very much inspired by the fact that First Nations saw us when others didn't. We've been very, very
active in the Maui fire, wildfire relief. And because we, and I was just telling Michael about
about this, because we were so inspired by people taking the time and energy to find us when we
were very much invisible from the circuit. We went and found undocumented workers.
We went and
found the Cofa Community. We went and found the disabled community and the money we raised. So we
raised money quite quickly. We made sure to reach other people in the margins. And I think it's that
cycle of uplifting that cycle of elevating voices, making sure other communities are heard is
what's going to lead to exactly what you said, a liberated and just society. So that's probably
the coolest stuff we do. Thanks, Trisha. Heather? Well, Change Labs, the organization I run,
is all
about Indigenous entrepreneurship. So I'll ask this audience have any of you been to the Grand
Canyon or Monument Valley? Mesa Verde? Cool. I see some hands. Have any of you driven across the
Navajo Nation? That's where I'm from. Okay, so if you have driven across Navajo, you probably saw a
lot of land. You probably saw a few gas stations, McDonald's, KFC, and Taco Bell. We have plenty of
those. But did you see a Native-owned business? Any culturally cognizant businesses as you're
d
riving across the reservation? I'll if you haven't, I'll tell you, there's none and that's
not entirely true. They're just invisible and that's what ties back the invisibility theme.
So I think it's hard for even myself. I left the reservation when I was 18, I went to college and I
was gone for about 18 years. And even coming back, I didn't understand why. Why do we only, why do
we always have to eat at Taco Bell? You know I know so-and-so makes fry bread. I know so-and-so
makes Navajo Taco
s. Why don't they have their own store or restaurant? And the answer to that
is quite complex. And I'm sure we're going to get into that tonight. But the the irony to
all of this is I think as Native people we are hyper-entrepreneurial. We've been entrepreneurs
for decades, long before the white people came. And yet because of the ways that our treaties were
designed and whatnot, our entrepreneurs now are forced to run their businesses from their homes,
run their businesses from the informa
l economy, from flea markets that usually operate one day
a week, just for a few hours. So what do we do at Change Labs is we're trying to create a space on
the Navajo Nation where entrepreneurs can thrive, where they can come and they can build their
business skills, access the financing they need, and most importantly, network. Meet other people
who are of a shared mind, who who want to see change on the reservation, because there's
still even a stigma around that. There's a stigma around
running a business. There's a stigma
about wanting to create that change. And I think the most powerful thing that we offer in that is
this physical building. The space that we just opened in June, which was a six-year journey to
get there. But the lack of the lack of physical spaces on the reservation that are dedicated to
local entrepreneurship into that visibility, our space I think, is the first step towards showing,
you know, we do have a community of entrepreneurs here, we do have a
community of changemakers,
but we need a place where people can feel safe to come and share those ideas. Michael, I close
with you. What are you, what are you all doing? What are we all doing? Always a good question.
No, I think I was sharing with Trish, as we were sitting earlier, that I think we have the easiest
job on the panel here in that groups like Heathers and like Trishas come to us every day with their
hopes and dreams and we get to find funding and support them. So we have like t
he coolest jobs in
the world. Great. Trisha, I'm going to come back to you in the book you write, "Social movements
focusing on environmental and climate justice need to evolve to center histories of Indigenous
Injustice because indigenous environmental issues are deeply rooted in cyclical acts of displacement
and alienation." What do you think are some of the roles that philanthropic organizations and frankly
like, not everybody here is from a foundation, like what are the roles that peopl
e can play
in ensuring that in and especially people who care uh about environmental issues, and ensuring
that indigenous people are centered in movement building work. I'm getting a little teary-eyed.
I wrote that obviously long before the fires on Maui and it's I could have never imagined the
level of disaster. My husband and I have the tremendous fortune of working in Maui a lot, and
were there shortly, maybe just a few weeks before the fire and have been very involved since.
And it's f
or those who've never been through a climate disaster, I wouldn't wish worse I wouldn't
wish it on my worst enemy. What is so hard about that now is knowing that Indigenous communities
weren't just saying like saying the warnings. They were screaming the warnings. And now I think
it's about, you know, climate disaster is coming for everybody. I think that's my advice. We were
not prepared. And centering Indigenous voices is critical, not just because of the social and the
historical issues,
but if we are to meaningful, meaningfully address, climate and environmental
issues in this country and globally, we have got to find a way to address the histories that
have happened to land and resources. And nobody's saying it for their health, right?Nobody's out
there protesting just to make noise. It's because Indigenous peoples are the canaries and the coal
mine. We're seeing it first. We know these lands. We know that what has happened to our lands and
our waters and our resources h
as put us on a path to destruction and crisis. So my advice is not
simply to listen, but to fund the orgs. And we're lucky. Like we we were able, because we had a
strong board ,we have CPAs, and we have attorneys, and we're a very wonderfully run organization,
but we have very much turned our attention to the grassroots communities that don't necessarily
have those administrative structures. When we gave money post-fires, we gave to organizations to
build that infrastructure. We gave them o
ur HR teams, our CPAs, our attorneys, our insurance
guys. And that's what I would encourage others to invest, not simply, it's not enough
to just have compassion. You folks have to build connection, because from connection comes
change. And when you can build those relationships and those connections, you're going to truly
uplift community and build relationships that are going to put us on a better, healthier,
more environmentally sustainable, and just path. Heather, I wonder in your work
what it looks
like to center Indigenous communities and voices, like what I would want to ask you a similar
question, like what is? We can spend a whole lot of time uh mapping the architecture
of how people do it bad, and I'm wondering what it looks like to do it right so that there
is, there's a road map or a path that people can take. We're still trying to figure it out. I
can't claim to have the answer to that, but I will tell you that I came home to the reservation from
Silicon Valley,
where I think I spent 18 years of my life there. And I feel like I absorb by osmosis
just that mentality there around startups and scale and unicorns and all of that. So when I went
back to the reservation, I felt this sense that I was bringing all of this knowledge back, and there
would be great cross-pollination opportunities and then when confronted with reality, I realized that
I had to unlearn everything that I had learned in the first 18 years of my adult life and kind of
I don't kno
w what the right term is or word is. But get back to maybe embrace the way things
were when I grew up that I kind of lost when I moved away and spent so much time away. But
I talk about the concept of closure or Chapter 18 and this sense of it's an underpinning of
Navajo philosophy. I'm not going to not going to go into it too much because I'm not a poet,
I'm not a philosopher. And if there's any Navajo people in the audience. I know there are some I
don't want to I don't want to say anythi
ng that's incorrect. But the loose translation into English
is balance and harmony and what does an economy look like that's in balance and in harmony? And
what I took away from my time in San Francisco was the ideal is the hockey stick. It's scale.
It's In many ways contradicts I would say, what we think about success from a Navajo perspective.
And you know what is business success? I think how people would describe that off the reservation is
completely different how than we might describ
e it on the reservation. So we spend a lot of our time
having conversations like that. What does business success look like? How do we even Define wealth
? Is wealth defined by financials? I don't work with anybody who thinks that wealth is defined
by finances. So if if we're building models based on these values that are completely counter
to ours, what does a new model look like? I think those are the questions that we're just now
starting to explore. What do people in the Navajo Nation i
magine to be wealth-like? What are the
indicators that you're seeing now as you start this work? Yeah, well, a lot of it has to do with
being able to give back to the community. I'll say that . So wealth is measured by how much you're
able to contribute how much you're able to give back, whether or not you're able to support your
family and your relatives. Those are the primary metrics that we hear. Michael, I'm going to go
to audience questions. This is from Dan Khan from Muslim American L
eadership Alliance. What can
we've talked a lot about philanthropy and I think the thing that you and I both know is that with
or with with or without foundations and donors, people come together and fight for a better
future like we are. At best, bureaucrats can make a more even terrain in that fight. And Dan
asks what I think is an important question, like what can an average person do? Somebody not tied
to philanthropy, not tied to financial wealth, to be of service to Native American co
mmunities?
And what's work based from where you sit? Yeah, you know it's a good question. We had this
conversation fair amount at First Nations in that we recognize that we have such a small population.
To get real things done in this world is probably beyond our means in some ways that we don't have
population density or population scale to affect large scale change. Sometimes not going to say
always, and that oftentimes we need good allies, that we need people who are, you know, working
alongside us, not for us, not speaking for us not, you know, speaking in place of us, but people
who are supporting our voices, our policies, our work, whether that's financial or politically
or whatever. Allyship is really important. I think that there's a sense of understanding the history
of Native America in this country that, you know, when we talk about this invisibility. It part of
that invisibility is very deliberate. Right. And I think it'd be really nice if people were as
equally
as deliberate about knowing about us as they are deliberate about not knowing about us.
And I think that would be really helpful in people understanding the why, where we are now and the
how we can we can change that um want to ask you like if a person were to leave here tonight what
I'm hesitant to ask you this question but I'm going to ask it anyways um where should they
go to start where should they go to start if they want to be of service to Native American
communities maybe I just ask
all three of you like for Indigenous communities more broadly I
think, well a couple things when we talk about invisibility and the intention right that it's
like people with political and economic power settlers and then a long history of political and
religious institutions like the one we're sitting in now have made it a project to make Native
people, Indigenous people invisible. And so I think non-Indigenous people are equally victims in
the project, Invisible Rising. And I'm wondering
what is what is the right way to learn? Do you
know what I'm saying? I don't want to. So I have an answer. I'm not sure I have the answer. When
we did this big project , Reclaiming NativeTruth, one of the things that we created was um
a resource for allies because we recognize that this narrative needs to change in order for
our lives to change. But we can't I guess I just pointed out this is probably beyond us doing
this alone because of the pervasiveness of the narrative that we're tryin
g to change. But there
are instances every day that non-Native people encounter with regard to Native narrative that
is untrue and can be corrected or adjusted or just pointed out . And this guide for allies
really helps folks understand what you can do on an individual level to change that narrative.
And I think that's a big building block. One of the reasons we did that work, one of the reasons
we, you know Ray and the folks here put this book together was to change that narrative. So
I
think that's a very big piece. I I'll make the same comment I make to every philanthropist who
ask me how I can how they can start investing in Indian country. And I just tell them to write a
[ __ ] check. Yeah. Right. And it's it's really ,it's really that , it's really that easy. Right?
And there are so many good organizations who are doing incredible work in the shadows. And
if you want examples, get on First Nation's website and all of our grantees are listed.
There's more than 500 of t
hem pick one out, make a donation. So I mean I think there's little
things people can do to make a difference. So there's some answers. Yeah. Heather, I want to ask
you the same question. We always encourage people to buy Native. There's I mean, we are artisans.
We have the best holiday gifts. You're doing your holiday shopping. There's actually a shout-out
that I'm going to make later. But I mean, I'm wearing eighth generation here. Somebody
commented on my pin earlier. That was a Daniel J
ohn pin. I walked in wearing a Blazer by Marissa
Mike Design. There's so many great Native artisans and entrepreneurs out there that have wonderful
things to sell. We have so many businesses that are invisible and how do we bring them to the
forefront? Buy Native. Trisha, I'm just I'm going to add to the buy Native. I'm wearing a Kahula
Lea. I'll add I'm wearing a Le po necklace my husband made my earrings. And my earrings . And
her earrings. So I I totally agree with that . I'm one of thos
e people that think sovereignty
is economic. So, you know, first and foremost, always we're a gifting culture. So everything
we brought for some of the people here are from Native businesses, designers, artisans.
I'm deeply and I'll just give a quick example. So we were buying gifts for our staff,
and we just got them towels. It really wasn't like anything spectacular, but we bought from a
Native designer who, after I placed the order, called me, and you know sort of in tears and
said, "You
have no idea how much this means." And I think that's it really does. Right? Like you
can. Nothing wrong with Macy's, but you can walk to Macy's and it's faceless when you're buying
from a Native artisan, you're supporting their family you're supporting their community, you're
putting food on their table. So yes absolutely. Always. The other thing I always encourage people
learn the history of the land you're standing on, like just take the time. Right it's a lot of times
they're very pai
nful histories and it's hard to ask people to make themselves uncomfortable in
that way. But it's super important. Learn the land you're standing on. Learn its history, learn about
all of its inequities and its injustices. And is you know, and I tell people, just do it on your
own right. Like if you can Tiktok at night and scroll in bed and watch cats running around you
could take like five minutes to like go through those Tiktoks of all of these amazing indigenous
voices that are now using
alternative media to uplift their stories and, you know, just take that
time and learn about the where's the water when you turn on your faucet. Where did that water
come from? Right? Where did the, you know, those things were likely taken from indigenous people?
So at least give them the respect and honor them to learn about the resources we consume of
our in our everyday lives. I wonder and I'll go this way. One of the questions asked by Hugo from
Rally Point is how has Native America
n, how have Native American issues or awareness of Native
American issues paralleled or not other ethnic group issues? So Latino, Black, Asian like where
are their point points of intersection? And I'm actually curious like where are their points of
departure? Like where you three are coming from, three kind. You are coming from a very different
place, but I'm wondering in context where are their points of alliances and points of tension?
It's actually I was going to tack on to Michael's e
arlier answer about alliances. I love the justice
initiatives that are currently happening, things like Justice 40 and others. We sit on multiple
organizations like the Ocean Justice Forum was one. The Ocean Justice Advisory Group where it's
BIPOC communities. And you know where I completely agree. We are small in numbers, but you add us
up with everybody else who gets marginalized of everybody else who's been forced into the shadows
and invisibility, that conversation changes fast. And I h
ave to say in the last couple of years,
we didn't necessarily realize there would be as much investment in the Justice 40 initiatives
we're seeing from the Biden administration. But those organizations have very much become our
big, some of our biggest supporters and allies. So I think that, and I think the first thing is to
do is not play who's more marginalized. Right? Like everybody has what they go through they have
their own traumas and their own histories. And I think just finding spac
e where we see each
other, and we support each other, has become incredibly powerful. So I think there's certainly
departures, but it's so much more powerful when we stand together. Can you say a little bit more
about the Justice 40 organizations, and just sort of for folks who don't? So yeah. So the Biden
administration has made this commitment that much of their federal funding specifically around
climate change, 40% of that would come to sort of marginalized communities. So it's the Just
ice 40
Initiative. And I have to say, for an organization like ours just sort of talking about invisibility,
nobody gets to doctorates because they're sane, let me be super clear, like you have to you got
to be a little crazy to get one. You got to be completely out of your mind to get two. But
it was because I was always told it was never enough. Right? I went to a very good high school
I got my law degree first. I was like but, and the answer I would get as a young Native Hawaiian
woman
with a lot of degrees, was but you don't have a PhD. You don't really know what we're talking
about. And I'm like, "Are you people effing kidding me ?" Like, so I went and got my second
one and I don't remember I was going with that. Now what was the question? The Justice 40. The
Justice 40, okay sorry sideways with it, sorry, I'm most part Portuguese, if that means anything
to you up here, it means I sometimes go sideways. But you know so this Justice 40 initiative was
really about seeing
each other and uplifting each other. And despite all of that, only until this
year and I have an all Native Hawaiian PhD board did we start getting invited to apply for bigger money.
And it was because the GreenPeace supported us, and Green Latino supported us. And these other
groups came to our aid because our success alone was not enough. We literally had to link arms.
We have now a white house that is committed to giving funding to these other organizations, and
I think it's amazing and
I think it's working. And so I'm really, really uplifted by what's happening
right now, and I truly hope it continues. I'm very worried it won't. Heather, I'm curious for you,
what does it look like? What are the similarities or tensions that you see across other communities?
Yeah, it is this the right question. It's an interesting question. And well I've noticed
that I guess post-COVID, Black Lives Matter, there's been a huge or we've been suddenly
invited to a lot of cohorts a lot of BIPO
C cohorts and that's exciting. We meet a lot of
great organizations. The challenge, though, is that we're still the only Indigenous
organization, in the cohort, and and we are desperate to have conversations with peers,
other Indigenous organizations that are invested in economic justice. And I don't know where they
are in the room. And frankly, we're still trying to figure out who they are. There's not
enough of us. So I think it's been a little bit a point of frustration for us that when
we
do get invited to participate in these things it does. That the fact that we're the only
Native group there, and we're still having well, there's no shortage of lessons to be learned from
other BIPOC organizations. The constraints that we face operating on the reservation are constraints
that don't exist for people who don't have to live within those constraints. So we always have
this other layer or this other barrier that we're trying to overcome that I think a lot of our peer
BIPOC o
rganizations don't have to contend with. And you know, somebody pointed out how important
it is that you be able to see other people like you in the room. We don't have that yet.
So I'm I wonder, like, can you share a little bit about these constraints? Just I feel like any
opportunity to level set. What is a Latino who's running an entrepreneurship program in the Bronx?
What don't they see for that you have to confront? Sure, I mean, I think it's one of America's
biggest secrets. And maybe,
I don't know, not for me, but certain I'm married to a non-native
person. And he didn't know a lot of this before I met him. But if you live on the reservation, the
gist of it is that you operate by a completely different set of rules. So we did the study at
Change Labs in 2020 where we derived the time, the amount of money, and the complexity of the
processes to start a business in Cortez, Colorado, which is about 30 minutes off the reservation.
And we compared that to somebody who is doi
ng the same thing in Shiprock, New Mexico, which is
largest, second largest community on the Navajo Nation. It's six times as longer, two times more
expensive, and off the charts more complex. And I think these are things that you know as
everyday Americans, we never learn about the fact that people who live on the reservation
do play by these completely different set of rules because we don't own our own land because
most of our roads aren't paved because it's still a struggle. Like I thi
nk in that report we
shared that according to indicators published by the World Bank on the ease of doing business
around the world, Navajo Nation ranks in the bottom 15% of countries when it comes to accessing
land, enforcing a contract, or even just getting electricity to start a business. So imagine,
you are, I mean so many of us start businesses. Imagine if you're you're just trying to make
ends meet, you're trying to start a business but you're confronted by these insurmountable hurdl
es
where if you just lived, you know 10 miles away, all of that would disappear. I mean talk about
systems that are designed against us. These are the day-to-day challenges that we face that most
of us can never even know is a problem or even exist. And then couple that to the challenges of
access to finance, where food deserts, it's just the list goes on and on. But I hate to just pile on
the negativity about living in tribal communities, so I'll paint it with something positive. I mean w
e
persevere. We have the most incredible dedicated entrepreneurs who are building up our communities
despite these odds. Michael, one of the.. I need to get a little bit more clap patience.
I'm going to, I'm going to slow it down and let the claps come. One of the seven principles of
indigenous worldview cited by Vanessa Ronos in the collection is that knowledge is holistic,
cyclical and dependent upon relationships and connections to living and non non-living beings
and entities. Why is t
his important as like a framework or a point of departure for
folks? I'd love to answer that question, but I also like to weigh in on this one we just talked
about because I think it's really important. A couple things. One is we do talk a lot about the
disadvantages of starting businesses at Navajo, but there are some things that happened at Navajo
that couldn't happen anywhere else . And I will point out one of my favorite examples is like
five years ago, Navajo Nation, was the first plac
e in the U.S. to pass a junk food tax. It
wasn't Berkeley, California, it wasn't Boulder, Colorado. It wasn't Eugene Oregon. It wasn't New
York City. It was the Navajo Nation. Wow. Right. And they did this despite being spent heavily
against by Coca-Cola and the Arizona Beverage Association. They did it because they had one
regulatory authority so they could make changes that other municipalities couldn't do. They had
homogeneity, of people and beliefs, which kind of goes to your question j
ust now, but really that
they could see the world with a similar value system. This is an advantage they distinctly
enjoy, and we talk about in venture capital alot about what do you have as competitive
advantages. These are the advantages that Indian country has. What's interesting about how we
differ from other groups Latino, Black, Asian is these are racial minorities and the relationship
that Indians have with the United States is not one of a racial minority but one of a political
ide
ntity. In our relationship with the United States and that makes this difference, when people
try and put us in BIPOC alliances is that our identity and our relationship to the United States
is fundamentally different. And we have different things. We need to protect tribal sovereignty,
the willingness to govern, our ability to govern ourselves, rights that we retained, not fought
for, much different set of rules that we get to play by. And so it does create some differences,
right? But the
re are some similarities. Let's go back to philanthropy. For instance, we have such
a small amount of money going to Indian-controlled causes that's not different from Black and Asian
and Hispanic like combined philanthropy funds. All of these groups at less than 10% of all
philanthropic dollars as we approaching the minority majority in this country where 50% of the
population. So why do we let a an institution in philanthropy who subsidized by our tax dollars, by
their inability, or their
ability to avoid taxes, why do we let them get off the hook of paying a
tax that is equitable across racial and political identities? Yeah. So that's where we're that's
where we're the same. Yeah. I wonder if. I just think about the newness of BIPOC as a term right?
Like I think about the like I don't. Chris and I wish I would have actually asked you this earlier
today when we were talking about this. But like, the origins of BIPOC in this sense that post 2020
there was like a hierarchy in
which Black and Indigenous people had a similar relationship
or a more like relationship to white people, and not white people at large but to white
power institutions. And then there were all of these other people of color who had different
relationships with these power structures, and I wonder, what it felt like for me and I'm wondering
if this was your same experience. Is that BIPOC became a code for just saying Black people.
And I wish we would just say like in a cohort, like oh we ju
st want because that's actually
legitimate, necessary warranted of resource, right? I wonder If you experience is that a hot
take? I feel like I'm, you know when you're I'm one of those people who starts to like tiptoe
into a fire conversation and I'm like [ __ ] it's getting really hot. Oh God, should I be asking this
question? But now I'm already here so I'm.. Let's go. I mean I am thrilled to see the "I" in BIPOC
yeah but much like Heather pointed out a minute ago, there's two many times
when I show up in the
room and and I always share a quote I heard. "It's like to be Indian in most instances is not to
be in the minority is to be in the only." Right. And so when we go into BIPOC alliances, there are
many other identity-led groups in that room, and usually one Indian, one, if there's one Indian.
So um I love the idea that there's BIPOC but I'm not sure it's really that inclusionary often.
I used to make. I was once giving a talk at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and t
hey had this
really wonderful initiative called "Boys and Men of Color "-- BMOC -- and I made the joke that BMOC
stood for "Back and maybe the occasional Chicana" and it the joke went over about that well.
Right? They did they did not. They did not find it as funny as I did, nor my mentor who
was sitting next to me. But that happens a lot that when we say minority in this country,
we mean Black. We need mean Chicano or Hispanic. We don't normally mean Indigenous, and we rarely
mean Asian. T
hat's right. I think that's right. I think that there's an interesting tension around
building solidarity in the way that I hear you, Tricia, right? There's a clear sense that together
our communities are more powerful in solidarity, in a depth of relationship with each other.
But I so appreciate, Michael, you making this distinction that unlike other folks of color and
Native and Indigenous communities in this country have a unique political relationship, a political
identity that's differ
ent than a racial and ethnic identity. Ray said this earlier today, and it
keeps on bouncing around in my head, there are 536 Native Nations native communities. One is not
a number that I knew. And to imagine that there would be a through line between all an exact kind
of interest and alignment feels just, we wouldn't do that for any other community. And somehow we do
that for Indigenous communities. I want to start moving us to wrap up. And I'm curious, when you
all imagine a future where
Indigenous achievements are celebrated, Indigenous lessons are centered,
and indigenous people are honored and celebrated, what does that look like? And I want to ask you
in two ways, what has it looked like for you? And I love this story about the Navajo Nation and you,
Michael. What does it look like in real life right now? And then what, as we come together and build
relationship, what do you hope it will look like in the future? And I'll start with you, Trish.
Well, I'm going to go back
to the comment about we're often the only ones in the room. I think,
and again, I'm going to go back to Ray, it does require advocacy on our parts to make sure we are
not the only one in the room. And I think Native Nations have done that phenomenally well. And I
think when we all start to come into the room, we start to uplift our own stories and our own
achievements and our own voices. I want Heather to tell me what all the Navajo businesses are
so we can go patron them. I think that's ,
you know, coming together is powerful. And to me, what
it looks like when we recenter is one, we need to be unafraid of confronting our own histories.
I am horrified by a lot of the censorship that's happening around just disgusting history. So
first and foremost, we need to be unafraid to face things that have happened in our past that
have been horrible, made it horrible. And two, because that's what's going to lead to the ability
to discuss ongoing things that are problematic. And when
you can sort of build those connections.
Again, when I say coming back to connection, when you build those connections and you feel
like you can have conversations that are not about vilifying any group or whatever, but
these are all the things we've gone through, let us never make those mistakes again and let
us create a world where we are just an equitable. And to me, again, it starts with knowing the
indigenous names of the places you're going, knowing the Indigenous histories, knowing I
don't
know who these lovely men on the walls are, but none of them strike me as Indigenous people. So
I mean, right. Just sort of having space where we are openly discussing these centuries of history
that are just not even present in our everyday lives. And to me, I've never seen it as like, oh,
feel bad for the poor Indigenous people. I'm like, we're amazing. We are value-added, we are smart,
and we have much to contribute to the future. And to me, that's what it looks like If it's not j
ust
let's go figure out these uncomfortable things, but let's get to a place where we're celebrating
all the things we bring to the table. Heather. I mean, it's a lot of the same. We have this
initiative at Change Labs where we've been engaging indigenous futurism artists to depict
what our communities might look like if white settlers never came. And the paintings and the
drawings that have come out of that are pretty incredible because at this point, I think it's
even hard for us at Chan
ge Labs to imagine what that world looks like. But one of my favorite
paintings, it's called Tuba City into the Future. It's by Navajo, a Navajo painter called Ryan
Singer. It's hanging up in their office. He has a fun way of combining Star Wars, which was
based on Dune, which was based on Navajo culture and a variety of others. So I totally get why
a lot of Navajo people resonate with Star Wars, but he has this tendency to incorporate a
lot of Star Wars character mythology into his paintin
gs. So we have this beautiful
painting up in our office that has kind of like a Star Wars Tuba City. You have to come and see
it. It's pretty incredible. But it's dotted with all of these little, well, first there's kind of
sheep walking through town, and there's Navajo businesses galore, and there's agriculture right
in the middle of the community as well. So seeing things like that gives me a lot of hope for this
is what we're striving for. There is no Navajo dream. There is this American
dream that I think
is maybe dying out a little bit now, but this whole white picket fence to kids in a dog. But what is the Navajo dream? What's the indigenous dream? It's definitely not the white picket and
a green lawn and whatever. So we've never been asked this question. So it's really fun to think
about what does a native community look like, presuming that white settlers never came? And a
more recent collaboration that I want to give a shout out to, because I think it has really taken
off in our community, it's only been out a day, is that there's some ladies here from Ralph
Lauren and Change Labs and this incredible Navajo artist slash badass entrepreneur, Naomi
Glass, recently collaborated to create a new collection of Includes sweaters and reps and all
kinds of beautiful things, but things like that, these kind of aspirational collaborations
that highlight not only the artistry that exists in our community, but they also engaged
videographers, photographers, models.
I mean, it was truly a community led effort that
has resulted in one of the most beautiful campaigns that I've ever seen. Things like that
we get really excited about. And it just, it's, I think it's one of those things that we don't
see often enough in our communities that to see that pride instilled in our community
is fantastic. Michael, I want to end with you. So what was the question? When you imagine
not only a visible, but a deeply present and a just Indigenous reality looks like, w
hat do
you imagine? What does the world look like? What does the world look like? I think
there's pieces. I can imagine. Yeah, right? Maybe it's a red picket fence,
not a white. That's a bad joke. That's a bad joke. You're
really good at a dad joke. Yeah I am good a dad jokes. Ask my daughters, I am a master at
dad jokes. Before I came back to First Nations, I was working in venture capital, much like
Heather, and I spent a weekend, and I spent a week at this capital company I was at and
the
entrepreneur we were talking to was telling me how his children would starve if we didn't invest
$30 million in this company. And then that very weekend I went back to First Nations to sit on
our grant making committee and there were people who were asking us for five and $10,000, for which
they promised they would change the world, not the world, but the world the community they were from.
And it was very believable that five or $10,000 would do so. And so what does equitable look like
?
Equitable looks like that I can give them $30 million and tell the other guys to go jump. That's
what it looks like to me. Yeah. Amazing. On that note, I want to thank the three of you for
spending tonight with me. I want to actually also take back the story of this place and
say it's something subversive that we're doing. And I don't want to do like the pretend
like we're reclaiming a space because I feel like you have dad jokes, and I too, have dad
jokes. But I, I had the same feeling
that you had. And I think not taking things back, but that
sense of being subversive is a beautiful thing, and I want to name that this could be
a subversive thing that we did tonight here. I want to thank you all for doing with
me. I want to thank you all for joining us.
Comments
Great panel presentation!