Climate & Sustainability
Indigenous leaders take center stage at event on funding sustainability projects
The inaugural Economic Futures Summit created space for connection, Indigenous innovation, and collective investment in environmental sustainability efforts
Summit co-chairs Heather Tallis (seated) and James Rattling Leaf, Sr. on stage in San Francisco. (photos by Saul Villegas of Moderno)
With a growing appreciation for the value of Indigenous voices and perspectives in the development of sustainability solutions, and financing them, hundreds of investors, academics, and policymakers gathered in San Francisco earlier this month to share ideas for building a sustainable economy in the face of climate change.
The inaugural Economic Futures Summit, supported by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience (CCCR) and co-chaired by CCCR Senior Fellow Heather Tallis, drew over 300 attendees and focused on changing how we think about sustainability solutions and how to fund them.
The summit, from November 4 to 6, kicked off with Indigenous ideas of economics, finance, and our relationship with nature and each other. Participants heard from leaders in Indigenous on-the-ground solutions, governance, environmental stewardship, and sustainable economic development.
Tallis and her two co-chairs, Gwen Bridge of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation and James Rattling Leaf, Sr. of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said that Indigenous peoples in the Bay Area and around the world are essential to creating a sustainable environmental and economic future. With that in mind, they organized the summit to create a space for meaningful connections and mutual learning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders.
“There’s a lot of opportunity to listen to and learn from Indigenous concepts and leadership to evolve our investment options.”
heather tallis, cCCR Senior fellow
The meeting focused on four pathways for action, which served as through lines for conversations during the event:
- A tool for bringing ideas to market
- A framework for supporting the backbone of Indigenous economies
- Priorities for building Indigenous leadership and capacity
- Core concepts of Indigenous economic visions
Building Indigenous economic capacity
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. nonprofits receive federal funding annually, and government grants and contracts make up a quarter of the average nonprofit’s annual revenue. For all climate nonprofits, including Indigenous-led organizations, the timely distribution of those funds is imperative for programming. Otherwise, the group is forced to figure out how to front the cost until grant funds are disbursed.
Two presenters at the summit, Esther Duke and Saraya Hamidi, lamented the pattern of Indigenous-led organizations being forced to take out high-interest loans that are difficult to repay, or to abandon their projects entirely because of delays in federal grant disbursement. They decided to change things.
Duke is the chief operations officer of Coalitions & Collaboratives, a Colorado-based nonprofit that developed the Forest & Water Renewal Revolving Loan Fund to lower the financial barrier to entry for environmental programming—in recognition of the time sensitivity of climate resilience and wildfire management work. With support from a combination of grants and private foundation program-related investments, the nonprofit provides below-market-rate bridge loans to organizations waiting on the disbursement of their federal grants.
Hamidi, a member of the Cherokee Nation, is an Indigenous partnerships manager at the conservation finance nonprofit Blue Forest. Also concerned with a lack of efficient funding for restoration and protection of forests and watersheds, Blue Forest’s mission is to connect capital to sustainable land management.
Hamidi’s focus is ensuring Indigenous people are consulted, or better yet, are leading land management projects. Moreover, the Indigenous Partnerships program connects Indigenous grant seekers with capital and supports tribal forest technology development through the California Wildfire Innovation Fund.
Restoring land rights
The dialogue at the summit included acknowledgement of the painful past of the Indigenous communities of present-day California, including the Ohlone people comprising 50 tribes who have lived in the Northern California region for more than 10,000 years.
For the past several years, the state has begun to formally acknowledge its historical wrongs against the land’s original peoples. Geneva E. B. Thompson, the deputy secretary of tribal affairs for the California Natural Resources Agency and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, spoke at the summit, recognizing these harms and highlighting major milestones in the restoration of Indigenous rights under Gov. Gavin Newsom. For example, in June 2019, Newsom signed an executive order that serves as a formal apology to the Indigenous peoples of the region and a commitment from the state government to preserve the history of California native peoples.
The administration has also recognized the importance of Indigenous access to ancestral land, for its rightful ownership, preservation, and protection. Thompson emphasized the success of two recent examples of California returning colonized land to tribes: The Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel regained over 1,000 acres of their homeland in San Diego County this August and the Tule River Indian Tribe were given back over 17,000 acres of land in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in October.
These tribes plan to reinvigorate their long-standing relationship with the land and revive their management practices with a goal of protecting endangered species and restoring native ecology.
Tallis said she is grateful that CCCR recognizes the need for investment in Indigenous-led climate solutions. “The center is really focused on finding solutions and connecting research to action around climate resilience,” she says. “With this focus, the center helps us elevate what we can do in California and what we can bring to the world when it comes to listening to Indigenous communities and evolving our economy.”