Economic Justice is a Matter of Life and Death for Native People.

A History of Violence

Today, 84% of living American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 56.1% who have experienced sexual violence, amounting to more than 1.5 million women. As Makanalani Gomes, a Native Hawaiian activist, said to Grist when speaking to the importance of self-determination, “The need for sovereignty for all Indigenous peoples is critical, is paramount, to us literally surviving.”

When large populations of predominantly non-Native men flock to Indigenous territories or sites surrounding reservations or Indigenous communities for well-paid jobs—as countless studies have shown—rates of violence go up. Greenpeace reports, “Extractive industries like mining, logging, and fossil fuels are some of the largest perpetuating factors of violence, trafficking, and murder against Indigenous women… Environmental degradation, systemic racism, economic inequalities, and social injustices are deeply connected to the same root causes—capitalism and colonialism.” When studying the Bakken oil-producing region of Montana and North Dakota, Immigration and Human Rights Law Review found that sexual assaults on women on the Fort Berthold reservation increased by 75%.

All this as our world grapples with the increasing repercussions of climate change—made all the worse by those same extractive industries. As of 2021, Native people have lost 99% of the land they previously occupied, according to a study spanning 300 years and nearly 400 tribes. NPR reported, “As a result of the near-total loss of their tribal lands, Indigenous people are forced to live in areas that are, on average, more exposed to climate change hazards like extreme heat and decreased precipitation…The Mojave tribe (along the Colorado River), for example, experiences an average 62 more days of extreme heat per year than it did on its historical lands. Nearly half of tribes experience heightened wildfire hazard exposure.”

Today, the survivors of this long-term campaign of genocide, dispossession, and land theft are left with the highest national poverty rate at 25.4% compared with 8% for white Americans. Of the over five million Native Americans in the U.S., 78% live away from that limited reservation land—forced to go elsewhere for economic opportunity. And it’s no wonder. On average, it's 12.2 miles from the center of a Native American reservation to the nearest bank or credit union, meaning that 16.3% are underbanked compared to 9.3% of white Americans. 

What Does Native Economic Justice Look Like?

To that end, we must think critically about how Indigenous people would define economic justice. If the Native land stolen through British colonialism and American westward expansion is valued at $23 trillion, what do reparations look like?

Native Economic Justice looks differently across the country, due to the multitude of harms we must repair, and the distinct and unique cultures of each native nation. First Nations Development Institute examines this in their Exploring Native Justice essay series. However, Native Justice is much deeper than the frameworks, and guides as our sector so often reaches for. What we’ve heard was that much of Native wisdom and storytelling is not part of a written tradition, and pushback on the demands for this need for documentation, as oral traditions can protect the culture and communities they come from. We urge those wanting to approach justice and repair to open their work to listening and watching—in addition to seeking written frameworks— as a way to better understand and interact with Native culture and lenses.

Regardless of the how and why, the who must include Indigenous voices and self-determination in how we approach repair. Below are examples worth uplifting in this fight toward an equitable economy:

Increasing Access to Capital: 

• The 5 Rs is a framework that sees lending and ROI that is Relational, Rooted, Restorative, Regenerative, and Revolutionary, as an alternative to the 5 Cs of Credit as an underwriting and due diligence standard.
• In an interview that also features Jaime, Director of The Fireweed Fellowship Jaqueline Jennings explains it as, “Investors should explore their implicit bias, do some of the heavy lifting on the personal level before they come in as a helper. That deep personal learning is what creates an authentic connection to this work, and it will allow your contribution to be sustainable. “
• Longtime Common Future partners Native Women Lead works at the intersections of Rematriation, economic justice, and racial equity. They aim to increase the empowerment, opportunity and agency of Native women entrepreneurs by providing support, resources, and funding. Roanhorse Consulting is an Indigenous-led firm that works to change power dynamics in health and wealth systems. In 2021, we worked with NWL to launch their Character-Based Lending Pilot which in turn provided funding for NWL’s network.
• The Native CDFI Network was recently awarded $400 Million in a Historic Bid for Clean Energy
• Change Labs, participant in our 2023 accelerator, has committed to deploy $13.3 million in loans to Navajo businesses.
• In Indigenizing Catalytic Capital, CU Boulder and Native partners cite that despite comprising 2% of the total U.S. population, Native non-profits only receive 0.23% of philanthropic funds. As they explain, “there has long been a status quo of Native economic invisibility….[meaning] that investors and philanthropy aren’t seeing the opportunities that exist to support successful Native enterprises.”
  
  They recommend four steps: 

1. Grants, specifically grant capital coupled with investment capital as part of an integrated capital stack 
2. Clear commitments to long-term consistent capital delivery 
3. Technical assistance 
4. Right relationship, including connections to capital providers’ social and professional networks.

Expanding Political Representation

In politics, we see leaders across the spectrum stepping in to advocate for Indigenous rights. Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) is the 54th United States Secretary of the Interior and has spearheaded a federal pilot co-managing certain federal lands and created a Missing and Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

• Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk Nation Of Wisconsin), Tom Cole (Chickasaw), Markwayne Mullin (Cherokee), Yvette Herrell (Cherokee), Kaialiʻi (Kai) Kahele (Hawaiian Native) all hold Congressional offices while representing both major political parties. 
• Advance Native People is a national organization that has been working to address the need for increased Native American representation in elected and appointed offices throughout the country.
• The Native Farm Bill Coalition advocates ensuring Native Americans and Indigenous groups have input on the next Farm Bill. “Their top priorities focus on increasing access to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs by explicitly including Tribal Nations and Native producers in the provisions and reducing legislative and bureaucratic barriers.”

Protecting Climate and Water

With climate change and extractive capitalism so tied to harm, so true is that with repair. Indigenous leaders have been at the forefront of water protection, climate action, and protest, as have organizations dedicated to the movement.

• ​​Indigenous Climate Action is an Indigenous-led organization guided by a diverse group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, water protectors, and land defenders from communities and regions across the country.
• The Gila River tribe near Phoenix, AZ, has been playing a pivotal role in water management after using the courts to secure one of the largest shares of Colorado River water flowing through Arizona—part of a growing and global movement.
• Across North America, Indigenous tribes and nations are consulting their traditional ecological knowledge to help prepare for a warming world.

Returning Land to Indigenous Stewardship

Land reMatriation, also known as "land back", is the “return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. The term, more commonly known as ‘land back,’ acknowledges how colonization contributed to the theft and plunder of Indigenous land and communities—and has grown into an effort to help reclaim stolen lands.” Returning land to indigenous communities also works towards goals of combating climate change through traditional stewardship, which involves returning indigenous seeds to the land for the purposes of restoration and access to traditional foods.

• The Sogorea Te Land Trust is an urban land trust aiming to return traditionally Chochenyo and Karkin lands in the San Francisco Bay Area to Indigenous stewardship. The group has pioneered the Shuumi Land Tax, a voluntary annual contribution that non-Indigenous people living on this land can make to support their work.
• The Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy is a similar urban land trust aiming to reMatriate land to unrecognized Tongva descendants in the greater Los Angeles County area.
• Recent wins include The Shasta Indian Nation, InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, Montana’s Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, The Ponca people, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, and many more.

Changing Narratives

Popular film and television are telling stories about Native people, by Native people, starring Native people. This work is providing economic mobility to the actors, writers, and creatives, while also allowing them to fight back against long-standing harmful stereotypes.

• Netflix’s popular Spirit Rangers is an animated series with an all-Native writing team.
• Lily Gladstone (Blackfeet and Nimíipuu) became the first Native American woman to be nominated for an Oscar—and the first to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress—for her work in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
• Other examples include FX’s “Reservation Dogs” and AMC’s “Dark Winds,” and many more.
• Native Justice Alliance has a list of films they specifically screen at events meant to discuss justice, including Conscience Point, Dawnland, Dear Georgina, and more.
• IllumiNative is a Native woman-led racial and social justice organization dedicated to increasing the visibility of—and challenging the narrative about—Native peoples.
• NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, they are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.
• Edgar Villanueva published the bestselling book Decolonizing Wealth analyzes the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance, drawing from Native traditions to offer recommendations for restoration.
• Founded by Common Futurist Trevor Smith and Savannah Romero (Eastern Shoshone) BLIS (Black Liberation-Indigenous Sovereignty) Collective sparks radical collaboration and narrative alignment between and within Black, Indigenous, and transformative social movements to repair, decolonize, and reshape culture.