[00:04:11] Host: I'd love to talk about that grant-making element or philanthropic element. When you're looking at philanthropy from and for Native Americans, how important is it to have an organization like First Nations Development Institute with that lived experiential knowledge of where the need is the greatest?

[00:04:32] Rebecca: Oh, that's a great question. The importance of it is it's vital to the health of our Native American communities. I worked with tribal communities here in Southern California for the past 25 years. One of the reasons why we started the California Tribal Fund and the reason why it is housed under First Nations Development Institute is just because we fall and continue to see a real lack of awareness and understanding and actual interest in mainstream philanthropy in tribal communities.

We did a study from 2002 to 2016 that showed that only 0.4% of foundational giving was awarded to Native American community and causes. That's not even 1%, it's 0.4%. When we say it was awarded to Native community and causes, actually that means that of that 0.4%, 65% of those dollars did not explicitly benefit Native American communities. Those grants went to non-Native controlled organizations that, through their normal programs, happened to serve Native American communities.

I don't actually know the math of that, but it's 0.4%, and it's 65% of that point percent. We really believe that that means that philanthropy, in general, has helped and perpetuated predatory fundraising practices whereby non-native-controlled organizations continue to receive a large majority of the philanthropic support that is meant to do work in our native communities.

That means that non-native organizations are getting the funding to serve native communities. We view that as a philanthropic colonialism, in a sense, and we believe that it continues to dismiss indigenous frameworks and practices and that we, as tribal people, aren't getting the support to lead community-led grassroots projects.

[00:06:45] Host: You touched on it a little bit about your history and your work, but how about you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to start working with the California Tribal Fund?

[00:07:00] Rebecca: I've worked with tribal communities here in Southern California for about 25 years. I was a former grant writer, tribal administrator, and most recently, I was the executive director of California Indian Basketweavers Association, which is a statewide organization of tribal basket weavers. I came into this work primarily as-- previously being a grant writer, I worked with federal and state grants and was very good at my job. I've secured several million dollars in funding.

When I began working with a native-controlled nonprofit, California Indian Basketweavers Association, it was really a rude awakening. Whereas before I would be able to secure a million dollars, half a million dollars for projects, I was doing that same amount of work for $8,000 to $10,000. I was getting turned down on a regular basis by funders who would place us in different funding silos.

Basketry is seen as an art, and sometimes people only want to fund the art. They don't want to fund the land access that relates to us gathering basketry plants and materials. They don't want to fund the language that goes into how we interact with our baskets and with our land. They didn't want to fund the traditional ecological knowledge or the cultural burning. A lot of our basket weaving materials, they require to be regularly burned in order to create good materials.

A lot of funders didn't want to fund those different spaces. They just wanted to fund the "physical" art part of weaving. During that time, I met another-- well, she's actually now a vice president here at First Nations, A-dae Briones. I met her through my work at California Indian Basketweavers Association. She came out to a gathering. They were one of our only funders that we ever had in the private philanthropic space that came to our events, that called and checked in, that I felt were really actually interested in the work that we were doing.

I like to tell people that the story of the California Tribal Fund is a simple story and it's a personal story and some people might say it's a small story. Really it's just that two Native American women sat down for dinner one night and just had a conversation about our experiences with the philanthropic community.

[00:09:37] Host: Then how did the California Tribal Fund get folded into First Nations?

[00:09:43] Rebecca: In February of 2020, after I had had my conversation with A-dae, we brought together a group of 12 California tribal leaders and practitioners for a two-day workshop in San Francisco. Really we just wanted to discuss with them if we felt any philanthropic organization ever got it right. What was "easier to fund", both if we did have good experiences versus what would, if we had program officers from philanthropic organizations in a room with us, what would we want to tell them? What would we want to share with them?

We did that for a day and a half. Then the second day we had invited originally 12 philanthropic organizations and program officers. News spread fast that we were having this event, and we ended up having 28 program officers that showed up. We had to take our workshops outside because we simply didn't have enough room. During that first initial meeting, we decided, yes, did want to launch the California Tribal Fund.

There are other funds that fund this work in California, but there are no funds that are California based that only support California tribes, both federally and non-federally recognized, as well as California tribal communities. We have said we are going to be a California tribal-led organization. We will be a California tribal staffed organization, we'll be a California Tribal Advisory Committee advised organization. We had a wonderful initial commitment from the Swift Foundation as well as the California Endowment Foundation. Then what happened three weeks later is the state shut down.

Without a formal mission, vision, values of funding guidelines, we had immediately within the month of March two funders reach out to us and they wanted us to mobilize over a million dollars in COVID funding. I like to say we literally-- when they say like, "We built the boat while we were already on the ocean," that is what we did. We created our mission, vision, and values in a space of six months all online because we were not gathering together to protect each other.

The lovely part of that is that because of that flexibility and that ingenuity, we were able to create something that has continued to serve us two and a half years later, and we do find a group of funders, it really resonates with them.

[00:12:38] Host: This is kind of the converse to an earlier question. We talked about how important it is to have an organization inside of the tribal community for philanthropy, but it must be pretty vital to also seek these outside supporters as well, these outside funding organizations that are wanting to support and help.

[00:13:07] Rebecca: Yes. We have been very lucky and people keep telling me it's not luck, that this is what was meant to happen. We have had funders that have contacted us and they have said, "We really believe in what you are doing." They have given us the same type of trust as we give our grantees as well. We work with 29 unique funders right now.

In the little over three years that we have been in operation, we have mobilized almost $3 million in grant funding through over 175 unique grants, though we've worked with 70 grantees. Here in the state of California, there are 110 federally recognized tribes, and over 80 that are seeking federal recognition. State-recognized tribes often operate through a 501(c) nonprofit. Our original goal was, in five years, we would love to have 25% of these organizations and tribes somehow be a recipient of our funding and we're already there. We're there in year three. It's really exciting.

[00:14:30] Host: Did that COVID tidal wave right at the beginning consume a lot of that initial work? Or were you able to diversify?

[00:14:40] Rebecca: The funny thing is that our funding is steady. In terms of our funding and in terms of our grantmaking, our funding has actually grown post-COVID. For a lot of organizations, that's not the case. We had this influx of COVID-related funding, but I believe in year one, we granted around 850,000. Year two, we went up to 1.2, and now in halfway through this year, I believe we're already at-- we're approaching 800,000. We are growing in a steady sustainable manner.

That's something that we focus on as a fund. We are very, again, lucky to be in a period of growth when many philanthropic organizations and funds are not in that space. That's also for First Nations in general. In 2022, we had the most impactful year in terms of our grant-making. We're really in a unique space.

[00:15:52] Host: I'd love to talk about some of the challenges facing California tribes that are unique to the tribes in this state as opposed to some of the other Western tribes.

[00:16:03] Rebecca: Sure. I like to say when I'm speaking about California, we have a unique history of trauma, and we have a unique history of resilience. We have things that other states just simply do not have. We had the mission system come through from 1769 until California became a state in 1850. That was followed by the Gold Rush. During the Gold Rush, they estimate that over 150,000, which I still think is very low indigenous people lived in California, and that 60% of our population passed away due to diseases that were introduced by people coming into our state.

After that, we had boarding schools. Many people have heard, or maybe they haven't heard that phrase, "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." That was the founding mission of Richard Pratt, he was the driving force behind Indian boarding schools. There were 25 of those in California. My grandparents went to them. They refused to talk about their experience of what they went through when they were in boarding schools.

I am 45. It wasn't until 1978 that parents won the legal right to prevent family separation. That was during our times as well. There is the fact that we have so many non-federal recognized tribes in the state of California. That is because again-- and I always say follow the timeline when you're looking at these things, when was the Gold Rush? What was important to California?

Between 1851 and 1852, the United States Army forced California tribes to sign 18 treaties that relinquished their rights to their traditional land in return for reservation land. I believe it was 750 million acres that we lost to those treaties. Those were lost treaties. They were just never ratified. I always tell people, imagine if you purchased a home, you signed all the paperwork, you're living there, and someone comes and tells you, "Actually, you didn't purchase this home and you need to vacate immediately."

That is a very large oversimplification of the process, but that is what happened. That's why we have so many non-federally recognized tribes. It's also part of the reason why we have the small rancheria systems. We have grantees that we work with, that their reservation is one square mile, and then we have grantees that are like Yurok that have a very large reservation space.

I don't think people realize that. There's also this misconception that every tribe in the state of California is a gaming tribe, and that just simply is not the case. Even with gaming tribes, there's a misconception that they are all large. A lot of the gaming tribes that have a gaming compact operate very small operations as well.

[00:19:34] Host: I'm thinking of that term now, of the boarding schools, "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." I think it leads into one of these projects that First Nations is working on, the Reclaiming Native Truth project. I am often saddened with this work that I do, that whenever I'm researching a topic, I'm often saddened by how little I know. A lot of that falls on me. Obviously, there's information to learn if you just take the time, but a lot of it falls on the public education system, and then that sadness gets amplified when I share these episodes and I regularly hear, "Wow, I didn't know that," or, "I didn't know that happened here."

Who gets to tell the story is so important, especially now in this time with this uptick of book banning and whitewashing of history and public education. Will you talk a little bit about the Reclaiming Native Truth project?

[00:20:44] Rebecca: Yes. I think before I start with that, probably you'll hear a lot of stories because we're always our storytellers. I have two stories that I'd like to tell. My daughter, she's 17 now, but when she was eight years old here in Claremont at the Robert Redford Conservancy, they had a project that the students got to go to the conservancy and learn about local Tongva culture and learn about their creation story, what they ate, just a little basket weaving and such. My daughter, they had a little booklet and she brought it home and she said, "I told them my mom knows these people” and they said, 'No, those people are dead.'"

[00:21:43] Host: Oh, geez.

[00:21:44] Rebecca: She goes, "No, my mom knows these people. We go to basket weaving with them." She said, "People did not believe that I was Native American." The second time I was at the Autry Museum here in Los Angeles, they had a wonderful exhibit on basket weaving. One of our former board members, actually, they're still a board member at California Indian Basket Weavers Association, Clint McKay, there was this wonderful video of him with his family weaving, and I was standing there looking at it, and there was a group of grade school kids there, and they said, "Are these people still alive?"

I think that's one of the main things that I think about when I think about Reclaiming Native Truth and what we do in terms of our education system. Native Americans, we are presented in the education system just in key places, in mission system, in these very tight timelines, and we're not seen as modern people that are living next to you and beside you, and that are continuing.

We've never stopped tending our land. We've never stopped practicing our language. We've never stopped all of these things, but that education system doesn't allow children to learn about us as modern people. Also, I believe that a lot there's no modern lens to what we look like as people. They don't see that as necessary. When do you first learn about Native Americans if you think about it? It is Thanksgiving.

[00:23:42] Host: Thanksgiving. Right, yes.

[00:23:43] Rebecca: Maybe when Columbus "discovered" the Americas.

[00:23:48] Host: The Mayflower. Yes.

[00:23:49] Rebecca: Yes and maybe if you were still my age in California, maybe you had to do a mission system project and of course, the Native Americans in the mission system were very happy because they were being saved by the mission systems, but our history in the '50s, in the '60s, in the '70s, today, that's not taught.

I was speaking with a couple of my coworkers last week on a site visit, and we were talking about how you have to pay college-level tuition before you can actually be aghast about the things that happen to our tribal communities. The sad thing, speaking to what you were saying about book banning and elementary education, is that I truly believe as a parent that's when your children are most empathetic.

They still have that flexibility of their mind to have diverse ideas. It really breaks my heart that a lot of this history is just based on empathy. Nobody likes when things like that happen to another human being, so why are these things not being taught in public schools? There are some school districts that are beginning to step into this space. I worked with the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians at their Chámmakilowish School. They have a wonderful dual enrollment Luiseño language program, but they work with their local school district a lot on lesson plans and teaching the history of the local people in that area. Those type of things are few and far between.

[00:25:43] Host: When I was growing up, we're the same age, but I was born and raised in California as well. I'm in northern California. We went to Miwok Village. I think it's similar to your daughter's experience, but it felt like it was a history lesson instead of looking at contemporary modern society. We went back to learn how these people once lived as opposed to how people are living now.

I see how pop culture can be a tool for sharing stories and normalizing tribal life and owning that narrative. I think of shows like Reservation Dogs and Dark Winds, and I know Marvel is going to be pushing out this series called Echo coming up. Hopefully, they'll do it right, but I think that that's like an opening for those of us outside of that tribal community to get the sense of normalcy and not have to put it in this bubble that's been fed to us for decades.

[00:27:04] Rebecca: Absolutely. Yes, I truly believe that my child's generation, a lot of people, they talk about Instagram or TikTok or things like that, all the detriment. I do believe that there's a positive to it. We have several grantees that during COVID, they did videos on vaccine equity in terms of-- in their tribal communities, they did language videos, they did videos for beading, they connected with elders, and continued intergenerational activities that they were doing in person. They really stepped into that space and utilized those tools to continue to learn and grow together.

I like to say we, right now, will be people's ancestors one day, and we need to focus on being good ancestors and not just being descendants. I really see a lot of our young people in tribal communities stepping into that space and being good ancestors. Tribal youth are cultural bearers, and they are our next generation of cultural bearers. I find it very exciting that they are using new tools to connect with each other and with the greater community as well.

I think that sometimes people don't realize that we are modern people as well, and when we utilize modern tools to connect a little bit more interest, I will take any interest if people are like, "Oh, I'm interested in learning about that. Why did they say that? I want to know more about this." I love that shift in the narrative.

[00:28:59] Host: Is there a push for indigenous studies in public education or history or that pre-colonial history similar to how there's the push for critical race theory or ethnic studies in some communities? Is there a push from tribal communities to get that more into the mainstream curriculum?

[00:29:30] Rebecca: You know what? I probably couldn't speak to that on a general-- because it really varies. It varies from city to city and county to county. We have tribal grantees that are in certain spaces in Northern California where they're very rural and 80% of the students in that school are Native American. By default, the school district is ensuring those things are taking place. In other areas, that's not the case still.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer for that. I know that many tribes are beginning to create their own schools on their reservations because they are not happy with the school districts that their children are being sent to, and the schools that their children are being sent to.

[00:30:39] Host: There's also elements that we could-- aside from history, as important as that is, that narrative, there's practices, plant-based medicine, environmental practices that can help turn the tide with climate changes. Is there a push to increase that knowledge to the general public?

[00:31:01] Rebecca: Here in California, Governor Newsom has the 30 by 30 initiative. Part of the 30 by 30 initiative, there is a large dollar amount that is tied to tribally led conservation techniques, which we don't call them that. The term "traditional ecological knowledge" is utilized a lot now, and even in some of our communities, we're like, "We don't call it that either." We really practice what we commonly call a concentric view of the world. We view animals and nature, plants, trees, everything as our relatives. We treat them as such. There is funding for these spaces and a lot of groups are doing really good work in this space, but that being said, kind of circling back around to the California Tribal Fund, a lot of tribes have been doing this work for several years, and they are in a wonderful place to receive this funding.

Others still need to work on the infrastructure in terms of-- to be able to access that funding. A lot of the work that we do, and the granting that we do is to provide tribes and tribal communities with that initial funding so that they are able to pursue larger-scale funding that has to do with climate fixes, which I don't like to utilize [laughs] that term.

What I will say is that I truly believe that land knows when indigenous people are tending it. I was recently at the Modoc Nations land up into Lake California. They have been tending a little over 700 acres now for two years. You can see their property line. It's like a stark contrast of what the land looks like on the other side that is being utilized by ranchers and traditional grazers using traditional techniques. The land on the other side is lush, it's verdant. There are animals coming back to it, but a lot of these grants, they want the science behind that. They want metrics, they want objectives, they want specific things.

That's not necessarily how we as tribal people interact with our environment. That was one of the other reasons why we created this fund. The majority, 80% of our grantmaking is done through general operation support. We don't ask for things like-

[00:33:43] Host: Reports.

[00:33:45] Rebecca: -we need an environmental assessment of why you need to do this. We need all of these things in order for you to access this funding. What we ask for, and because we're already in community, is we just want a conversation. We want to have a conversation. We want to walk the land with you. We want to see things with you. We want to listen, number one. We want to learn with you, and then we want to serve you in what way we can.

It's a little different in terms of how we do our funding and how we enter into this space. If a tribe wants to access funding through the 30 by 30 program, we're happy to help augment that. A lot of state grants and federal grants, they require a match of some sort or they require certain things in order to access them first. We're happy to help with that, and then we're happy to help grantees that are just getting started on this journey and they don't know where to start, and they're not even able to attend certain events and learn about where they can be and what their resources are. Again, this just comes back to a misconception of the resources that our California tribal communities have.

[00:35:05] Host: We want to thank Rebecca Tortes and First Nations Development Institute. For more information, visit first nations.org. Chapters podcast was produced by Past Forward and made possible with support from Chapman University and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit pastforward.org, Chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.