2018 IFIP GLOBAL INDIGENOUS FUNDERS CONFERENCE
BOLSTERING EFFECTIVE INDIGENOUS PHILANTHROPY: SUPPORTING INDIGENOUS SOLUTIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS FOR LONG TERM CHANGE
In January 2017, IFIP adopted a new strategic framework with the goal to expand the sphere of funding and collaborative action among funders and Indigenous Peoples to advance issues of importance to Indigenous communities. This comes at a time when our members have emphasized the importance of flexibility, collaboration, intersectionality and intercultural philanthropy, where we embrace reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities.
IFIP’s Global Indigenous Funders Conference will facilitate this transformation. The conference aims to achieve this by building on IFIP’s yearly programming, which addresses funding strategies and continued peer learning. The conference will challenge funders on how to practice the kind of philanthropy that fosters relationships based on the 4R’s of Indigenous philanthropy (respect, responsibility, reciprocity and relationships) and sustains them. It will provide the learning space to tackle these issues and will facilitate the building of support networks to implement solutions.
This year’s tracks include:
Track 1: Expanding the Sphere of Funding: Shifting Roadblocks to Resourcing, Silos to Synergy.
Track 2: Resilience and Revitalization of Indigenous Knowledge and Practice.
Track 3: Potentializing and Supporting Indigenous Self Determination: Lessons and Opportunities
CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS:
Suzanne Benally is currently the executive director of Cultural Survival. She came to Cultural Survival from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she served as the associate provost for institutional planning and assessment and associate vice president for academic affairs. She was a core faculty member in environmental studies and a member of the president’s cabinet. Before starting at Naropa in 1999, she was deputy director and director of education programs at the American Indian Science and Engineering Society and director of the Institute on Ethnic Diversity at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. She has been a teacher at university level and has served as a consultant to philanthropic foundations, nonprofit organizations, and many higher education institutions. She has worked extensively with American Indian communities. Her interests, teaching, and passions are focused on the relationship between land, spirituality, and people as reflected in stories, and in environmental issues and Indigenous rights.
Jim Enote is a Zuni tribal member and CEO of the Colorado Plateau Foundation and former director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center. He serves on the boards of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Grand Canyon Trust and previously the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and is a senior advisor for Mountain Cultures at the Mountain Institute. He is a National Geographic Society Explorer; a New Mexico Community Luminaria; and an E.F. Schumacher Society Fellow.
Jim’s service the past forty years includes natural resource, cultural resource, philanthropic, and arts work for many organizations including UNESCO, UNDP, International Secretariat for Water, US Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Mountain Institute, Zuni Tribe, and several major charitable foundations, museums, and universities. He has written in Heritage In the Context of Globalization; Science, Technology, and Human Values; Sacredness as a Means to Conservation; Mapping Our Places; Indigenous People and Sustainable Development; A:shiwi A:wan Ulohnanne, and Redrock Stories, to name a few. Recent short pieces include: We Cannot Live by Sentiments Alone, The Museum Collaboration Manifesto, Buyer Beware, What I Tell Boys, and Please Don’t Call Me a Warrior. In 2010 during the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference Jim was awarded the first Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology. In 2013 he received the Guardian of Culture and Lifeways Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, and in 2016 received the Hewett Award for leadership and service to the New Mexico museum community and for achievements in the museum field. Jim is also a home builder, firewood hauler, traditional bow hunter, artist, and farmer. He lives in his work in-progress home at Zuni, New Mexico.
Pre-Conference Events: Sunday, October 7th, 2018
Indigenous-Led Funds (pre-conference workshop): This day long gathering will explore how Indigenous-led funds can focus their efforts locally and globally to support self-determination and rights of Indigenous Peoples. This is open to Indigenous-led funds only.
Registration for this retreat must be approved by conference organizers.
2018 IFIP Learning Institute Closing Retreat (pre-conference):
The IFIP Learning Institute Retreat is part of the first IFIP Learning Institute, a multi-month learning program that will foster greater understanding of Indigenous Peoples by funders and philanthropy. This is open to IFIP Learning Institute participants only.
Registration for this retreat must be approved by conference organizers.
Post-Conference Event, October 10th, 2018
Funder’s Retreat (post-conference): This is an opportunity for funders to work in community and to strategize around collaboration and complementary ways to support Indigenous issues. This is open to funders only.
Registration for this retreat must be approved by conference organizers.
Message from the Board
As we welcome 2019, we remain deeply grateful to our community of thoughtful funders who are committing to transform the paradigm of philanthropy through honest self-reflection, humility and by listening deeply to Indigenous Peoples. This spirit of self-reflection was clear at IFIP’s recent Global Indigenous Funders Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The convening was a wonderful meeting of Indigenous and non-Indigenous funders and NGOs. Together, we engaged in a dialogue exploring funding values, principles and strategies to build relationships with Indigenous Peoples, while recognizing their self-determination and human rights. One highlight of the conference were the conversations among Indigenous-led funders on Indigenous philanthropy and the institutions they are creating that embody their values, cultures and practices of giving.
The Santa Fe gathering brought us together, briefly but powerfully, in community. It felt like a homecoming to us. IFIP continues to be unique among affinity groups, creating a meeting ground like no other to explore the connections between Indigenous self-determination and philanthropy. An example of this was a report-back from a gathering on Indigenous-led funds, where participants shared their thoughts on decolonizing funding and integrating Indigenous worldviews into philanthropic processes. As one participant from the gathering observed: “How do we move from transition to transformation? Another speaker suggested that Indigenous funders should be bold in their vision for the future, moving beyond “doing a lot with a little,” towards the idea of “audacious abundance.”
Here’s some philanthropic wisdom we gleaned in Santa Fe:
It is critically important for donors to develop a deeper understanding of governance – that which exists within a community or a nation, as well as that which has been imposed – and to bring this understanding to our institutional processes as well as our engagement with communities.
We need to pay closer attention to the sensitivities of language and imposition of English and other languages of colonization that do not adequately express Indigenous worldviews.
We were reminded of the importance of bringing this awareness into our daily practices and lives, because “how we show up in the world” matters.
As board members we are excited by how we are growing and learning as an organization and deepening our strategic work. Looking ahead, IFIP will continue to create and hold that space where we learn together, building on the principle of reciprocity, in relationship with each other and the Earth. As funders, we must also advocate to expand the pool of funding to Indigenous funds and communities. Our growing community of funders continues to move into new geographies and is taking on difficult issues and conversations. In this threshold moment on our planet, and in the face of climate change and other threats to Indigenous territories, we need what IFIP offers more than ever.
Thank you for your openness and your engagement in IFIP’s critical dialogues. Here’s to audacious abundance in 2019 and beyond!
Suzanne Benally, Conference Co-Chair, IFIP Board Member, Cultural Survival Executive Director
Jessica Brown, Co-Chair, IFIP Board, New England Biolabs Foundation Executive Director
