Shifting Power for Indigenous Futures

Chicago--home to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation--is on Native land. In the Potawatomi language, Zhegagoynak is named for the wild onions that grow here. Importantly, this land has an Indigenous history, an Indigenous present, and an Indigenous future.

Chicago is home to one of the largest urban Indigenous communities in the U.S. Indigenous people have been in relationship with this land through care and stewardship, trade, travel, and habitation—including the Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Mascouten, Kickapoo, and Meskwaki, and other tribes whose names genocide, colonialism, and U.S. expansion have erased.

Native peoples the world over face genocide, are on the frontlines of climate change, are stereotyped and caricatured in media, have been displaced from their homelands, are overincarcerated, and often excluded from basic services like healthcare and infrastructure. And yet Indigenous people continue to resist, survive, thrive, lead movements, create art, care for the environment, advocate for sovereignty, and preserve and celebrate their lifeways and culture.

Today is the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. But the truth is Indigenous people are essential partners and stakeholders in every issue we work for, today and every day. And we must intentionally shift and share power with Native people.

Our program strategies have begun to better account for these facts across our areas of work.

·??????Grantees like IllumiNative Org in journalism and media are working to bring better representation of Native people;

·?????? Equation Campaign supports Native people fighting against fossil fuels to Fill Gaps in Climate Action;

·??????Raven Indigenous Impact Fund with Raven Indigenous Capital Partners in Canada invests in Indigenous entrepreneurs;

·??????Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples is one pillar of our Equitable Recovery initiative that responded to the dual crises of COVID-19 and racism;

·??????Communities like Minnehaha County in South Dakota are working with Indigenous community leaders to address over incarceration and improve services;

·??????Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education advocates against corruption in Nigeria and to ensure original inhabitants around Abuja get access to resources to which they are entitled;

·??????MacArthur Fellows like visual artist Jeffrey Gibson and poet Natalie Diaz are creating works that challenge and shift how Native people are perceived;

These are just a few examples of the great work of MacArthur grantees and investees.

And yet, we must do more.

Edgar Villanueva writes in his book Decolonizing Wealth that “money is medicine” and calls for repair, dismantling power-hoarding structures to build “whole new decision-making tables.” Philanthropy has so much of this medicine—how can we ensure that it heals the people and communities we seek to serve?

We have a responsibility to support Native people in their work for self-determination and all the ways they work to prioritize and preserve their culture and practices. We are still learning, growing, and working to better shift power back to Indigenous people in Chicago and all over the world. This has the power to ensure a better future for us all.