First Nations Development Institute was founded in 1980 by Rebecca Adamson with a $25,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. Forty-five years later, it is one of the largest and most influential supporters of persistently underfunded Native-led organizations.
“In many instances, we are best known as an intermediary funder,” said President and CEO Michael Roberts, an enrolled member of Alaska’s Tlingit tribe. “And while that may seem a bit like modest work, it is not lost on us that our $17 million in grantmaking to Native-led institutions… last year would have put us among the top 10 in giving for private foundations — and all our peers on this top 10 list have sizable endowments to draw from.”
I first connected with Roberts in 2022 to discuss his extensive career in philanthropy, and, for depressingly timely reasons, I felt like we were due for a check-in. “Like every other organization in this country, First Nations is closely watching the decisions coming from Washington D.C.,” he said. “Our community partners are contacting us daily about funding freezes and cuts.”
All the while, First Nations has remained laser-focused on its mission of advancing American Indian economic development and economic justice. In June, it published a report titled “Elevating Native Voices of Justice Across Indian Country.” Building on years of research aimed at changing the American public’s misconceptions of Native peoples, it explores transformative approaches to Native justice and how philanthropy can benefit from Native experiences and worldviews, especially around justice.
“We wanted to make this research, not just a grievance,” Roberts said. “We wanted to begin the conversation, a dialogue about a different view of justice, one that could inform the greater population and the country as a whole.”
An overview of First Nations’ Native Economic Justice work
First Nations seeks to improve economic conditions for Native Americans through technical assistance and training, advocacy and policy, and direct financial grants in five key areas: Research and Advocacy for Native Economic Justice; its California Tribal Fund; Stewarding Native Lands; Native Agriculture and Food Systems Investments; and Native Arts, Language and Knowledge.
Its new report falls under its Research and Advocacy for Native Economic Justice program area, which builds out scholarship about Native environmental, social and economic justice. “Probably like every tribal community, we have a tenuous relationship with capitalist economics,” Roberts said. He speaks from direct experience.
Roberts grew up in the highly segregated community of Ketchikan, Alaska. After receiving his MBA from the University of Washington, he worked at First Nations for five years, then took a venture capital fellowship with the Kauffman Foundation. “During my time in the fellowship and in subsequent private equity jobs, I found that my values and the values of that industry were not as aligned as I would have liked,” said Roberts, who returned to First Nations in 2005, succeeding Adamson as president and CEO.
A core tenet of First Nations’ Research and Advocacy for Native Economic Justice work is the belief that capitalism isn’t the only way to organize a community.
“Prior to contact, many Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages built very evolved and complex societies and were organized by societal norms that had nothing to do with capitalism,” Roberts said. “We are led to believe in this country and around the world, or have been conditioned to believe, that capitalism is value free and its efficiency is superior without question. Yet each and every day in this capitalistic society that we live in, we realize that there are many limitations to capitalism and that capitalism has baked in values that are repeatedly proving to be not the best for people and the planet.”
First Nations operates within a capitalistic framework, so the challenge for Roberts and his team is to recognize and navigate the system’s limitations while not being defined or directed by them. “Economic justice is not just how the capitalist pie is divided,” he said, “but deciding what kind of pie we want to create.”
Findings from “Elevating Native Voices of Justice Across Indian Country”
The seeds of what became “Elevating Native Voices of Justice Across Indian Country” were planted in 2016, when First Nations launched Reclaiming Native Truth: A Project to Dispel America’s Myths and Misconceptions, an ambitious effort aimed at countering narratives that limit Native opportunity, access to justice, health and self-determination.
The report’s main takeaway was that “Native people are largely misunderstood, invisible and explained away with stereotypes, misinformation and outright racism,” Roberts said.
In 2018, First Nations published a follow-on research project, “We Need to Change the Way We Think,” that tracked how individuals in philanthropy thought about Native American communities and causes. Among the report’s many findings, respondents admitted to a lack of knowledge about the history of Native Americans, which contributed to funders’ lack of meaningful engagement with Native groups.
Fast forward to 2020. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, the country engaged in deep conversation about justice. “These conversations were very much needed, but Native people were not often included in those voices, and more importantly, they were never asked about their concepts about Native justice,” Roberts said. “And damn, if there is a group of folks in this country who have a right to talk about justice, or injustice in this case, it’s Native folks.”
“Elevating Native Voices of Justice Across Indian Country” gives voice to these individuals.
The report explores how longstanding concepts of Native justice get diluted when a punitive and retributive American legal system is layered on top of them. “For Native folks, justice is more about restitution and balance,” Roberts said. “You can imagine how these two worldviews act much like oil and water, and how the U.S. system can almost overpower the Native worldview, leaving very few places, even in the margins, where Native justice fits neatly.”
The paper calls for these Native practices to be restored and revived, not because Native communities abandoned them, “but because the U.S. government invested so many dollars in their deliberate destruction,” Roberts said. Its authors also encourage funders to consider how Native practices and concepts can advance their grantmaking priorities and repair past harms by aligning their operations with “the strengths, practices and needs of tribes and Native organizations.”
Calling on philanthropy to increase funding to organizations led by communities of color
Since launching with support from Ford, First Nations has received funding from an array of major institutional grantmakers, including the W.K. Kellogg, Northwest Area, NoVo, Hewlett, MacArthur and Henry Luce foundations.
“We have enjoyed a very sound relationship with private philanthropy,” Roberts said. “But because we enjoy this strong relationship, we feel we have an obligation to tell our friends in philanthropy when they could be doing better, which, by the way, is always.” When I asked Roberts how philanthropy can best advance Native justice, he said he “always sort of chuckles when asked this question, because I almost always answer un-jokingly, ‘write a stinkin’ check,’ although, in truth, my response is a bit more profane than that.”
It’s easy to see why Roberts is frustrated. As of 2022, private philanthropy gave just over a quarter of 1% of its dollars to Native-led institutions. The Trump administration has made matters considerably worse for Native nonprofits that, according to a June report by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, are disproportionately reliant on revenue from government sources. Meanwhile, the 50,000-plus foundations with more than $1 million in assets are sitting on approximately $1.55 trillion in noncharitable-use assets that could be used to fill the gaps.
As someone who is disinclined to “highlight a problem without giving a possible answer or solution,” Roberts called on foundations to increase giving to nonprofits led by communities of color such that it would raise its payout rate from 5% to 5.00063%. He argues that even the most risk-averse foundations could take this eminently reasonable step without raising the ire of the administration because, “as the empirical evidence does more than just suggest, there is a negligible to no commitment by philanthropy for DEI funding practices.”
First Nations is doing its part. “We are holding steadfast in that we are here to serve our tribal communities in every way we can,” Roberts said. “We are not only using the proceeds from our modest endowment, but we are reaching out to all of our private philanthropic partners to do more — write more and bigger checks, and equally as important, reaching out to their friends and colleagues — using their power to convene and convey the importance of funding Native-led institutions in this moment.”
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