Indigenous Arts

To be wealthy was not to have, to be wealthy was to give.

— Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way

The Native people of the East Bay Area are mostly overlooked by its modern dwellers. When people speak of Oakland as a place, most people likely think of a dense urban area — perhaps they think of the Oakland Raiders, with the team colors of silver and black. The Raider Nation. But do they consider the tribal nations that lived in Oakland before it was Oakland? Probably not.

The largest philanthropic organization serving American Indians, the Native American Agriculture Fund (NAAF), was recently established from a landmark 2010 civil rights settlement in which the U.S. government agreed to pay for almost 20 years of official discrimination, reported The Washington Post.

Native American organizations and causes have a crucial role in Indigenous communities but are chronically underfunded, according to a recent report of the First Nations Development Institute in partnership with Frontline Solutions.

A new report from the First Nations Development Institute (FNDI) has found that community foundations often fall short when it comes to philanthropic giving to Native American organizations and causes.

According to the report, American Indian-led groups received only 0.15 percent of total grants, even though most of the states analyzed had above-average concentrations of American Indian residents, reads an article at the Nonprofit Quarterly.

Eleven years of retracing our family history had led me here to the March, but this long journey began with my mother, Lucille Dion Wilson. She was enrolled on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, where she grew up. Between the ages of ten and sixteen, she attended the Holy Rosary Mission School, a boarding school on the Pine Ridge reservation. After moving to Minneapolis, she eloped with Chuck Wilson, a tall Swede from central Minnesota, and raised five children in a white suburb. When I was growing up, she told me that she was done with “all that,” referring to her Indian heritage.

July 2013, 40 pages. First Peoples Fund, P.O. Box 2977, Rapid City, South Dakota, 57709, firstpeoplesfund.org.

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An Online Conversation

Since the Ford Foundation’s institutional stabilization programs of the 1960s, arts funders have explored and implemented initiatives intended to promote the sustainability of arts organizations. Funding approaches, programs, and special terminology have been developed in support of the arts’ economic and social contributions to society. Artists and arts organizations are evaluated on the basis of their fiscal prudence and community contributions as well as artistic merit.

Several years ago I attended a meeting of California Indians at the University of California at Irvine. They had come together to discuss tribal sovereignty, but the campus parking regulations quickly shanghaied the conversation. We had been issued parking permits with totally incomprehensible rules, regulations, and instructions. Only one element of clarity stood out: “Improperly parked vehicles will be impounded.” For a half hour some of the best minds in Indian country were tied up trying to figure out where to park, until L.