NDN Collective President and CEO Nick Tilsen speaks about transitioning to sustainable forms of energy at the Cameron Chapter House during a visit to the Navajo Nation. (Photo by Jade Begay)
South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, home to just under 20,000 Oglala Lakota Native Americans, is part of the poorest county in the United States. Its life expectancy is the second lowest in the Western Hemisphere. The unemployment rate hovers between 80 and 90 percent. But at NDN Collective’s office in nearby Rapid City, an energetic group of indigenous nonprofit leaders is raising millions of dollars to serve the indigenous community.
“We’ve raised $18 million in the past 18 months,” says NDN Collective founder Nick Tilsen, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. “NDN Collective is putting out a challenge to the wealthiest families and to the world of impact investing: Don’t just do things for Indian people, invest in self-determination. Who better to do that work, to lead that work?”
Less than 0.3 percent of philanthropic dollars go to indigenous communities, despite disproportionate poverty and challenges in vital areas such as education and infrastructure. But in its first year, NDN Collective has already shifted the balance: Grants as large as $2 million have come from funding partners such as the Ford Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the JPB Foundation, as well as from individual donors.
The idea for NDN Collective grew out of Tilsen’s experience running Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, which used funds to build housing developments, pave roads, and create 50 sustainable jobs in the Pine Ridge Reservation. Thunder Valley CDC was so successful, says Tilsen, that it was approached by dozens of communities looking to recreate the model. In October 2018, NDN Collective was created to scale Thunder Valley’s mission far beyond a single region.
In December 2019, the group announced one of its most exciting ventures: the NDN Changemaker Fellowship, which offers $75,000 each to 20 indigenous changemakers from around the United States, Canada, and Mexico—the triad of North American countries known in indigenous parlance as Turtle Island. The 20 inaugural fellows were chosen from a pool of 700 applicants. For a new organization, the size of the response belies an urgency among the target population.
“I will be visiting Northern Indigenous communities like my own that have been affected by large-scale hydroelectric damming to create an indigenous-led environmental network to push for best practices out of government and industry,” says Canada-based Inuk journalist Ossie Michelin, who plans to use the money for education and a new environmental justice project.
Native Justice Coalition Executive Director Cecelia LaPointe, who is of Ojibwe/Métis descent and identifies as Two-Spirit and uses they/them pronouns, hopes to strengthen their existing skills by pursuing certification in either grant writing or indigenous governance and leadership.
LaPointe will also use a portion of the funds to recover from activist burnout, pursuing individual therapy and maybe even taking a vacation. For the past few years, LaPointe has worked tirelessly to build the Native Justice Coalition in the Great Lakes region without a break. The fellowship will allow them to prioritize self-care, while also supporting the coalition’s work.
“I would love to increase all of my staff’s salary,” LaPointe says, adding that it has been a challenge to secure funding. “Philanthropy makes the argument that we aren’t a big enough population. But a $5,000 grant won’t make up for generational trauma.”
The depth of need cannot be overstated when it comes to North American indigenous populations. Tilsen points out that the fellowship was targeted at individuals, rather than organizations, for a reason. “They are often doing this work with no resources at all, and many with no nonprofit affiliation,” Tilsen explains. “That’s an inflated reality in indigenous communities, because of the extreme underfunding.”
NDN Collective focuses on three impact areas: defending (the environment and human rights), developing (regenerative economies), and decolonizing (the revitalization of indigenous ways of life). In practice, those goals look like pushing for legislation that would create the first charter school system in South Dakota for Native students to learn through language and cultural immersion. It means filing a lawsuit—with other Native groups and the American Civil Liberties Union—to block South Dakota’s attempts to criminalize Keystone XL pipeline protests.
Most importantly, it means redirecting philanthropic funds into indigenous communities. That’s especially important now, considering Donald Trump became the first US president in 30 years to refuse to recognize Native American Heritage Month. The administration’s slap in indigenous faces serves as a reminder of why Native leadership is so important.
“The people closest to the pain,” says Tilsen, “have got to be closest to the power in order for change to happen in this country.”
Read more stories by Mary Emily O’Hara.