In this episode, Vanessa Roanhorse—CEO and Portfolio Lead of Roanhorse Consulting and co-founder of Native Women Lead—helps us to understand how we can learn a new worldview on the economy from Indigenous peoples, especially women while utilizing the concept of rematriation—rebuilding our relationship with the world and Mother Earth that surrounds us. We discuss a new definition of wealth based on individuals having access to home, food, and healthcare.
Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Podcasts
Mentioned in this episode:
Support / work with Roanhorse Consulting LLC at roanhorseconsulting.com
Support / work with the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship at rematriatingeconomies.com
Other organizations to check out:
Jacqueline Jennings, Raven Indigenous Capital, Fireweed Fellowship in Canada
Edgar Villanueva, Decolonizing Wealth Project
Carol Anne Hinton, who wrote a book called Indigenomics, is one of those foundational reads that anyone who wants to really think differently about how indigenous economies work
Bobbie Racette, Virtual Gurus
If you want to listen to the Grounding Practice connected to this conversation, click here.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Emily Race-Newmark: Welcome Vanessa. It's such a gift to have you with us today. I'm really excited for our conversation. Thank you for being here.
[00:00:06] Vanessa Roanhorse: Thank you for the invitation.
[00:00:08] Emily Race-Newmark: Before we dive into our conversation of visioning and talking about your vision for the world, you offered to lead us in some sort of grounding or embodiment practice.
I'll turn that over to you.
[00:00:19] Vanessa Roanhorse: Sure thing. Thank you. This is a grounding that a friend and colleague shared at a recent Native Women Lead Retreat. It's called the box grounding. And so what it is finding your comfortable space wherever you are, you're welcome to put your feet to the ground.
You're welcome to close your eyes. But the whole point is to identify and use breath to recenter and let go of stress. So you'll breathe in 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold. 1, 2, 3, 4. Exhale. 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold. 1, 2, 3, 4. And then you'll do one more round. And in each of the holding of four seconds, everyone measures differently.
So this is going to be quiet because we'll be doing it ourselves. And when you've completed the two cycles of the square, open your eyes and we can come back to the conversation. So with that I'm going to close my eyes. And start doing my meditation.
I hope you feel more relaxed.
[00:02:10] Emily Race-Newmark: I appreciate that invitation and also the space for us to follow our breath in our own timing. I think that is really welcomed in this moment. And it was so nice to be in silence with you also.
[00:02:21] Vanessa Roanhorse: I appreciate that. Same.
[00:02:24] Emily Race-Newmark: Why don't we begin with a story if you don't mind sharing of kind of how you got to where you are in this moment.
I know that this can't possibly capture the entirety of who you are in your life story, but any one story in particular that you would like to share.
[00:02:37] Vanessa Roanhorse: Absolutely. I wear many hats. And I think as a person I've worn many hats most of my life. It really wasn't until I became a mother that the variety of things that I love to do and the things I like to participate in have some clarity and focus and purpose.
I was living in Chicago with my partner. We just had our son and our son who now is nine years old is half Diné Navajo and half German Irish Midwest. He was born in the middle of one of the coldest winters I can remember in Chicago. It was like negative 40 in February when I had him. And so at 10 months we were coming into the holiday season and one of the reflections that the two of us had, my partner and I, were just how difficult things can be trying to raise a small child, not having a lot of family around.
My partner's parents both passed a couple of years before. Their sister lives in Wyoming. And we just had a discussion on what it meant to call a place home. What is home? We also had a discussion on what it meant to be your whole self. And for me, your whole self as an Indigenous person.
I was grateful that we had this moment, this "aha" moment, where it was like, We've been in Chicago 15 years, and until our child was born, I probably would still be in Chicago, but what was clear was it was time to return home.
One, to try new things, two, as a way to, for me, connect to my Diné community and heritage and ensure that my son could do the same thing as he grew up.
Side note to this story is I went to boarding school on the East coast. I left home when I was about 13 and I'd never lived off the reservation in that way, and I'd never been around so many non indigenous people, particularly non Navajo people, and the experience of going through a very well known private school on the East coast for girls. What saved me was my deep connection to my culture and where I was from.
I needed that to happen as well for our son. So we moved back in 2015 and I thought I was going to be able to find a job. I don't have a college degree. I'm an art school dropout. For years, I've been saying that I'm a terrible student, but an excellent learner. And my way of learning is baptism by fire.
It's upon returning back here and realizing that my diverse and strange resume really wasn't going to get me a job that I felt I could do that, I wanted to do. The other is realizing that my way of learning is very indigenous, which is indigenous people learn by doing. Those two things resulted in me sleeping on my twin sister's floor. She welcomed us to her home. And for six months trying to find a job and unable to, I, through relationships, was able to get my first contract and was able to start Roanhorse Consulting, which is my company today. And a few things happened. One, I came up with the name thinking it was just a stopgap opportunity. That's why the name is in my mind very uninspired. Roanhorse Consulting LLC does not, one, illustrate the work we do today, but, two, it was just something to get me to the "real job". Because I was still under the impression that I had to work for someone.
I was still under the impression that systems of opportunity and agency had to be through other people's determination of your worth. The other is, I didn't know what entrepreneurship was and entrepreneurship wasn't something that even crossed my mind. All of it to say, is it culminated, due to sleeping on the floor, burning through credit cards, a 15 month old and the two of us just trying to figure out how do we make ends meet?
So many people I know who started companies, it had nothing to do with this vision of entrepreneurship from a Silicon Valley perspective. Entrepreneurship from this place of, I have a world changing idea, entrepreneurship from this place of I plan to build a company and exit.
I started it as a holy crap I have to figure out how to cover my bills. And if there's one skill set I have, it is baptism by fire. I can do anything. Just let me in and I'll figure it out.
So the story really is the next evolution of what my life turned into, because in 2016 in January, when I founded this company, I had no expectation that we would be coming up to eight years.
I had no expectation that this journey would lead me to find other Indigenous women who were trying to start businesses and do this work. And as through that learning process of frustration, sometimes sadness and anger, we found joy and opportunity and were able to vision a future, which is Native Women Lead.
That through this journey, I would meet others who were like, there is an alternative economy, is another way to do this? And lastly, an opportunity for me to demonstrate through my Diné woman ways as a matriarch, because we are a matriarchal society that when you do put women back at the center of decision making and power it's not to usurp, but it's to rebalance.
And how this thesis came together, because my son, I bore a son, and my son was the reminder that everything we are doing, it's not about the legacy of me, but it's we hope that what we're building will support our children, their children, our grandchildren, into this future, and that women and feminine ways of being have to be at the center if we're going to actually dream beyond where we are today. And all of that started with the baby.
[00:08:47] Emily Race-Newmark: Wow.
I love it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I love hearing that the seed was with your son, but also you as a mother, right? And this narrative that you are stringing around returning home I think that's such a profound question and then a path to answer. It might be an ongoing question to answer.
[00:09:09] Vanessa Roanhorse: I have no assumption. I'm going to answer it in anytime soon but I will say that what I am able to do is try and try again.
[00:09:20] Emily Race-Newmark: How do you define home now with the wisdom that you've collected along the way?
[00:09:24] Vanessa Roanhorse: I think home is multiple things. There's as a indigenous person of the United States living on the lands that my people walked, there is a deep connection to this place. I have a deep connection to home, which is my belly button is buried under my parents house on the reservation.
And that's something many communities do. So for me, like I am spiritually tied to this place in so many ways, but home is also my ability to use my Navajo ways of being and my indigenous ways of being and thinking to support communities. To go where they want to go. Home is also my ability to find that place and to use that knowledge to support people in their homes.
The other place of home that I find is in my family and not just my family of blood, but my family of choice. How for me, home, again, reminds me that I can be anywhere because my home and my culture is tethered to this in Navajo way and so home can be anywhere. I love that because I think often with Native people, Native American people in the United States because of the history of genocide, displacement, assimilation, and then eventually termination and reservations and treaties all broken, by the way. We often are fighting for these pieces of land that were forced upon us for the most part to maintain our sovereignty. And I think those things are critical and important. I also believe that there is a future vision in which this worldview and this idea of place can be expansive the way it used to be for our ancestors.
If you look at the history, our ancestors had economies of scale. We were trading with people from the tops of Canada to the tips of South America. And the reality is we have to find home from multiple places. And I think that's an Indigenous worldview and an opportunity for us to redefine home.
[00:11:47] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you. There's a couple of things I wanted to dive deeper on, one being the indigenous world for you, which you just brought up.
I've read perhaps a piece. I forget where I read this, but you had written a piece about how that's the starting point to any conversation. It's if we can, especially for folks for maybe more of a colonized or Westernized worldview, I don't know what you would say is the opposite on that spectrum, but to just ground ourselves on what those principles are.
Either folks can go do that research on their own, or if you want to dive into that deeper now, we can do that. But I just wanted to underline the importance of that. As you mentioned.
[00:12:20] Vanessa Roanhorse: There's a lot of existing work out there. I just want to be honest that, there's so many incredible Indigenous scholars that have been really pulling at this thread of worldview, and part of that just comes from the ways in which I think the Western worldview version of education has been designed. And so there's epistemologies, pedagogies, et cetera. There's this process for worldview. And what many indigenous scholars knew and had to learn how to articulate is that indigenous people fundamentally think very differently about their relationship to the world around them. The purpose of themselves to the relationship to the world around them.
What we've decided at Roanhorse Consulting, because it resonated, is we've taken some of these pieces and have woven it into our body of work. But it is not definitive and I want to say that a lot of these conversations are live conversations. They're living pieces.
They're not like now that it is written, it is codified ratified. We are done. This is now part of this historical documentation and process. That's not how this works.
So I'm going to share some worldview that we like to talk about partially because whenever I enter into conversations. Because our work, my work specifically sits around finance and capital is I present this concept of a worldview as a way to try to off center.
The reasons we're talking about financing capital and the purpose of it with the folks, we want to present in a good way to have people have open hearts and minds to come to this conversation.
So we lean into Leanne Simpson, who is a renowned indigenous scholar. She's a member of the Alderville First Nations and she's Michi Saagiig Nisnaabeg. And as a scholar, she penned this concept of the seven principles of indigenous worldview. And if it's okay, I would love to read it because I think everyone should spend some time finding Leanne Simpson's books.
The first principle is that knowledge is holistic, cyclic, and dependent upon relationships and connections to living and non living beings and entities.
Second, there are many truths, and these truths are dependent upon individual experiences.
Third, everything is alive.
Fourth, all things are equal.
Fifth, the land is sacred.
Sixth, the relationship between people and the spiritual world is important.
And seven, human beings are the least important in this world.
If we can start there, when we talk about finance and capital, which is ultimately about power and tools and decisions, if we can remember this worldview, we might be able to have a meaningful conversation on what is the purpose of these tools.
[00:15:30] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you. Oh, my gosh. Thank you for reading that. And and also presencing us, to the broader context because what you just said that really just I felt that in my chest is without that purpose, what are we doing with these tools? And, we could really point to historically and even in the present moment. How these tools are being used as mass weapons of destruction and with our earth and the people and the animals on it.
Thank you for that. And I also, there was something that you shared in painting the picture from an indigenous, historical indigenous perspective, that other forms of economies or of exchange have existed and have been successful and perhaps the metrics of success look different than how capitalism defined success.
I just really thought that was important to underline as well. This isn't a new concept, but perhaps more of a remembering.
[00:16:18] Vanessa Roanhorse: Yeah, for sure. And the part around the new concept is, I think we live in this vision and this worldview, which is like, everything has to be innovative. Everything has to be new. The old has to be gotten rid of so the young and the new can flourish when reality, everything is cyclical. Everything's holistic. We live in cycles.
So much of where I think a lot of folks are coming to is actually historically multiple Indigenous worldviews. We've had this knowledge. We've had this knowledge. And there are different cultures that have been continuing to steward this knowledge, and there are other cultures that may have lost this knowledge. But it's only a handful of generations lost, we can return to it. And so I think when I hear things like circular economics, regenerative economics, restorative economics, those are all ways in which we're trying to reach back.
I think those are important. However, I caution to leaning so far into academia versus trusting our hearts because our minds have been running the show for too long.
[00:17:25] Emily Race-Newmark: Yes.
Thank you. Ok, so, o f the, immense vast body of work that you've helped to birth into this world or shepherd, or however you want to describe it. There's a newer initiative, the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship, which I want to spend some time talking about, but first this word, rematriating, can we just double tap on that and have you break that down for us?
[00:17:46] Vanessa Roanhorse: First of all, try typing in rematriating, it wants you to put repatriating, that's just to give a level of like how new and yet not new this word is. So in our current language systems repatriation is the word that it wants to be, but what's emerging is rematriation. And so there is a definition that I've always appreciated, which is that rematriation is rebuilding your relationship with the world and earth mother around you. That is the whole purpose of rematriation.
I absolutely appreciate and support that. The other is I want to lean into this idea that rematriation has a plurality, multiple ways to imagine. In the indigenous worldview, everybody's individual experiences are valid and how you approach this is valid. And as we see incredible organizations working in rematriation spaces I think of this Sogorea Te Land Trust team ,who's really doing that through literally taking the land back and bringing back ceremony, relationship and practices with the land that they're taking back for their community is a perfect, beautiful definition of rematriation.
It is such a beautiful thing to watch them build and grow. And as we see more of these land back strategies coming together it is definitely indigenous women, and femme and non binary and trans women who are at the front lines of this space, of this conversation. And so I think there is something about woman ness and all of its definitions, which brings me to this idea that we've been thinking a lot about, which is how we need to bring women
back into the balance of decision making and power over resources. Again, this is not a purpose of usurping men, but or the masculine. It's that we have to rebalance what's been lost. So for us, the Rematriating Economies came together as our way of saying when we put women and particular indigenous women, we put them at the center in which they're able to be decision makers over resource and in our case, resource will be capital. That through that process, they can transform what it means for them to rematriate that capital.
If we think about the language that Edgar Villanueva named which is that money is just a tool and it's about who wields that tool. When we think about Indigenous women wielding that tool, I think there's an opportunity.
So here is our definition, and I'm sorry I'm so wordy, but I feel like there's a lot of context and nuance that has to be explained around this.
For the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship, we believe that by recentering of Indigenous women as caretakers and leaders of economic systems that support their family, communities and tribes, it is the rebalancing of the feminine energy back into decision circles.
This is our approach to rebuilding and reimagining a system through a matriarchal lens.
[00:21:00] Emily Race-Newmark: Beautiful.
There's a lot in there to digest and sit with and I invite listeners to meditate in whatever way that looks like for you on what you just shared. Because I feel to your point about the autocorrect to repatriate, there's an energetic shift we need to embody, at least I'll speak for myself, to hold space for this possibility of rematriation and then all the forms that it's coming to be. It's so beautiful the work that you all are doing with this apprenticeship and I hope we can spend some time talking about what's emerging there.
And now this always feels like a sticky topic because our listeners are going to range in their identities. But I think for the number of times we talk about Indigenous perspectives on this platform, we actually have never broken down what does it mean to be Indigenous?
And I feel a tension coming up now where folks are like is everyone Indigenous somewhere? And as a white bodied person who has European ancestors, it's on that ancestral journey of unpacking where I came from that comes up to. So I'd like to also define when we're talking about the work that you all are doing, how are you defining what it means to be indigenous? Who is that encompassing specifically?
[00:22:05] Vanessa Roanhorse: Yeah, it's a big topic and I've had a lot of conversations with different people about indigeneity globally, indigeneity North America, indigeneity United States. And again, it goes back to nuance and context matters as well as being able to hold the complexity that everyone does have an opinion and an experience and those things are valid. For me as a Diné person and Navajo woman from the United States, who lives here on this territory, I always start from there. So for me, indigenous when we use it for the Rematriating Economies, is very much going to be at this point, we're centering United States based with the hopes of expansion to Canada, in Mexico and to the south of us. However, we want to hold the fact that indigenous, is you come from a place, right? You come from a land, and that land that you come from is where you call your roots and home.
It's also because of colonization and settler colonialism. It also means that we have been displaced intentionally. And so that displacement can look like direct genocide, boarding school, ICWA which is the Indian Child Care Welfare Act, where folks were literally stealing children from their homes to put them into foster care and adopting them out as a way to continue to kill the Indian and save the man.
So to me, Indigenous also has to encompass a conversation around belonging. Where does your indigeneity come from and does that community see you and name you as belonging to it? I think that's a more complex conversation because if we're talking about United States indigenous we were forced to have to use blood quantum as a definition for belonging or to being able to say, I belong to this tribal nation.
Underneath that, there's federally recognized tribes, and state recognized tribes, and then just non recognized tribes. And so at each tier, there's different levels of requirements to be Indigenous in the U. S. A lot of it has to do with access to resources, but underneath it all, it was a way to ensure that we began policing ourselves around Indigenous ness.
I'm very careful and conscientious that I don't try to speak too far beyond what I know because I can't fully articulate the experience of indigeneity in other parts of the world, globally. I can articulate it here from a place of being a federally recognized tribal member, I'm a citizen of the Navajo Nation.
But I can also articulate it from a place for the fact that as a federally recognized tribe and as someone who has a certificate of Indian blood, regardless of how racist and messed up that is. I still have the privilege of identifying as Indigenous without question. Other community members may not have that same privilege.
Indigenousness is complicated because active forces over the histories of all of our peoples, the goal was to conquer, take, and then control. And as a process of that, Indigenousness and our natural ways of being, of where we belong has fundamentally had to shift and we've had to reimagine what Indigeneity is.
So other scholars are going to have way better answers than I will have but that's where I start with. It's not even a definition. It's a personal lived experience for me.
[00:26:02] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I think more powerful than a definition in a dictionary or something you would find online.
So I really appreciate you sharing that perspective, because I think one of my commitments on this platform, it's hold space for some of these complexities and to be able to understand what we're inheriting here. And I think there's a lot of horror, trauma in what you shared as well.
So thank you for just bringing that to the light for a moment.
This kind of segues us to the first part before we get into the vision I do to, again, paint as clearly as possible what we think the problem or the challenge of our time is because from there that provides that context for where we create from. In your words, how would you define the challenge that we are sitting with currently?
[00:26:44] Vanessa Roanhorse: If we were looking through right now, specifically the lens of the Rematriating Economies, the challenge that we're facing is that there's billions, close to trillions of dollars moving to potential entrepreneurs and founders. And the reality of it is we're not seeing any of that money moving towards indigenous people or their founders.
So we're looking at it from a perspective of the fact that, if we're looking at money and if money is the tool or the instrument today for agency, safety, access, power, then we know systemically that money is not something that, one, native and indigenous people have access to and or have wielded if anything, it has been actively used to harm and traumatize us and keep us exactly where we are.
You talk to other BIPOC leaders and they're going to say the same things for their communities, that money has been weaponized and the folks using the money are using it to ensure that we continue to live in a place of scarcity and competition and ultimately, lose hope for what is possible while they can continue to become bazillionaires off the backs of us.
And this is all people. This is the systems we're in. So our small offering in this conversation is, one, we need to get our hands on that money so in a couple of ways through our body of work at Roanhorse Consulting and Native Women in Need, we're doing that by creating really different ways of developing funds and moving those funds to Indigenous women founders.
So we have multiple funds using what's called relationship based lending. We have an entire underwriting platform that doesn't use the five C's of credit but uses what we call the five R's of rematriation, which is a different way in which we identify the risk factor of these women and their enterprises. But even in building those, we can't move enough money fast enough to get to where we need to go. Which is more indigenous women in decision making roles over capital because that's ultimately what we want. Because it goes back to our thesis around when we recenter women and we rebalance women in those power in those industries, but also around resources and we put that back in their ,hands, they will support themselves, their family, their communities in the land around them.
We just believe that's going to be the ripple effect because that's naturally how they work. So we worked on the fund side. But the truth of it is during the pandemic, when everybody was launching these new BIPOC funds I had a number of phone calls in which folks were like, hey, we have this fund but we don't have the "I". We don't know where the "I" is. And it was very frustrating and eye opening. The reason they're not finding the "I" is because, one, the history of Indigenous people has been so marginalized and misunderstood that folks oftentimes didn't even know where to start, right? Like they didn't even know.
And so how many phone calls did I get and I was like have you talked to people in your community? Because it guaranteed there are Native Indigenous people in your community who are doing cool stuff. And it was this concept of relationships. Relationships take time. And so to get to the "I", you actually have to be intentional and willing to build relationships, which then open up the opportunity for trust, which then open up the opportunity for partnership.
But you have to start with relationships and if you don't start from that place, transactional opportunities is how we got here. And if you're a native person, you know what a transactional opportunity looks like, so it was probably a treaty. It was probably something your ancestors were forced to sign and change the world for the rest of the generations forward.
It's just a very different way of engaging. So the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship really came out of conversations I had with my colleague and sister, Jamie Glossier at Native Women LEAD, and then other colleagues of ours, like Liz Gambo at New Mexico Community Capital where we were just like, yes, we need to create our own funds and our own underwriting platform so we can demonstrate how not risky this group is.
But we also have to get onto the other side. Which is we need to be the check writers ourselves. We need to be working in the venture space, in the lending space, in the financial space, because the only way we're going to start to build meaningful relationships is we're going to have to show people how this works.
And so the Rematriating Economies is one of the offerings that we've put into the universe, which is if we're successful after this apprenticeship, which is a five month apprenticeship that started in July. And we are able to successfully place all 10 indigenous women into a equity fund, primarily an impact investment fund. We will have tripled the number of indigenous women in the United States and Canada in venture.
[00:32:00] Emily Race-Newmark: Wow.
[00:32:00] Vanessa Roanhorse: And that is how insane this is.
[00:32:05] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, that is despicable. I don't even have the words, but yeah, that is just insane, insanity. And something also that's coming to mind is just the longevity of this effort.
The fact that these things do take time, it just reminds me of land stewardship. Also, just the fact that when we're actually thinking, there's the context shift back to the seven principles around the Indigenous worldview around, we're thinking about generations beyond our own here. So I just want to ask you a little bit more about that. How do you approach that knowing that there's a longevity?
[00:32:40] Vanessa Roanhorse: Sometimes it's really hard because we have to build now and we are building with this generational perspective. And we're trying to balance the fact that, let me speak in the I, not the we. I'm trying to balance the perspective of I will not see, the fruits of this labor will not come to fruition in my lifetime and more than likely my child's lifetime. However, how can I still live generationally forward and yet do the day to day work and so much of that is because through culture, sisterhood, partnership and ceremony allows me that freedom to dream the future and also trust that when we set things in a good way, we are also setting the young folks coming up behind us to continue to take that forward, right?
As long as we are living with those intentions and we fail sometimes, we fall off of our purpose but as a Navajo person, you're supposed to wake up every day and be like, okay, I didn't meet what I wanted, I didn't achieve what I wanted, I didn't stay in a path that was what I wanted to do, but you have every day a chance to get back on it. And so I think it's just that.
There's probably a million proverbs, but the one I think of, I think it's Buddhist, is like, how do you eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time. It's this idea of acknowledging the broader thing and leaning into what can I do today as long as I'm teaching behind me? Then everything I'm building becomes cyclical, becomes holistic. That's how I'm approaching it .But I'm not gonna lie, I do get frustrated, I do get impatient, I want to live in the future some moments where freedom, safety, liberation, and joy isn't something we have to negotiate or code switch and sneak our way through to get it.
[00:34:49] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for that very human moment. And what I heard for myself, and that is really the importance of however you want to call it, but I'll use the word community here. When you talked about sisterhood and you talk about ceremony, there's a connection to something bigger than yourself.
So it's getting out of that individual, nearsighted mindset, to the larger whole.
[00:35:10] Vanessa Roanhorse: For sure.
[00:35:11] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, and then there's something I don't know if we want to spend time going on this or not, but it's just so crazy to me that part of the challenge that you're highlighting here is really around this perception of risk in terms of giving native women in this case, the driver seat around where money is going. Why is that even the thing? Do you have any insight as to why that's a challenge?
[00:35:31] Vanessa Roanhorse: The reason for these things is through colonization and patriarchy and capitalism ,the way for that power to maintain its influence and structure is to ensure others not like it are not successful. And it's done in a multitude of ways. Folks forget that the United States, economic infrastructure is not even 100 years old, right?
We forget that there was an active decision at some point in the study of economics where there was a choice being made between should we measure economics through math or biology? And those choices, which came from Western academic institutions, is what set us on this path. And in those choices, we are not included. Women are not included, people of color are not included, Indigenous people are not included. And if you're an Indigenous woman, you are definitely not included. So we've had to react and bear the brunt of those decisions that are just actively here to ensure we don't get included, that we don't get access to power and influence.
And so for me, it's not surprising, right? If you spent your whole life knowing this truth. None of this is surprising. But what I think has been surprising is that I happen to come of age and come into my sort of life's calling and life's work at the right moment in the right time in our history. In which for the first time, it's not just a handful of radical people or a handful of folks who are having these side conversations, but it's becoming a national discussion because we are acknowledging that climate change is real.
The incredible economic wealth disparity, the grotesque level of it, is really here. And we're living in a time in which the systems of politics and power are revealing itself. And all of the things we've known inherently behind the scenes is finally there. So at this fulcrum point, we are in as a culture in the world. We are at that place where, we continue down the path we have been or we, by brute force, change the direction.
And so to me, the question around why has this been so hard? This is just part of the bigger story that's been emerging and unraveling itself. And I also believe Indigenous women are at the center. And when we focus on that, and women of color, that's when the brute force changes direction.
[00:38:32] Emily Race-Newmark: Yes. Yeah. So let's change direction then and hear about your vision and we can spend as much time here. I love to, again, just remind us that this can be a space of anything's possible for a moment. We'll start really big, like magic wand. And we can create exactly how you'd like things to look and we can get more specific from there. What is your magic wand? How you'd like things to look?
[00:38:55] Vanessa Roanhorse: Just side note, we had a strategic plan for my company last week and we had to draw what we thought the future, if we are successful in everything we do, what does this world look like? Mine was something that my partner talks, we talk a lot about is this concept of what does a radical future look like where people are liberated? They're free, they have agency. And that we all have safety and opportunity. And we talk a lot about amorphous things. So for me to get to this future where we aren't confined, our gender is not weaponized, our cultures are not weaponized. We have multitudes of definitions of commerce and capital, it's no longer just money and a number, but wealth looks like health, wealth looks like a good home, access to good food the ability to define family dynamics for whatever it is.
We move away from the traditional binary marriage component. That people can live authentically across pluralities of experiences. But the way to get to it is we actually are going to, we're going to have to truly find the ability in the pathway to break away from what no longer serves us.
In Navajo culture, we have a history of moving into new worlds and every time we move into a new world we have to let go of the things that no longer serve us.
So I imagine as we have to emerge into this new world, things like four bedroom homes have to disappear. I imagine this idea that we're going to have to let go, that the world is our playpen. And this concept of tourism has to change. I think we're gonna have to let go of this idea that we get access to everything, immediately.
The only way that's going to happen is through our young people and what we teach them. And so my magic wand is we create the space for those young people to dream. We really have to create the space for these young people to dream, because it's not going to happen in my life, or many of ours. But if we can create the space through the Rematriating Economies, if we can create the space through these conversations around new types of underwriting, it opens a little bit more space for other folks to come in and dream bigger and continue to build and open that up and bring our young people with us right into the middle of this. Because the only way we're going to get into the jellyfish phase of humanity is if we're able to let things go leave the things that no longer serve us behind.
[00:41:53] Emily Race-Newmark: One thing that may arise for folks around that, it just depends on again, maybe your worldview or your relationship to letting go of things. There can be a clinging on to or a fear. I would say it's probably connected to the scarcity mindset that capitalism has infused into the collective. What would be your offering around a way to approach that letting go process in your vision? How might we approach that in that process?
[00:42:20] Vanessa Roanhorse: I think what I spend time on is really around the way we bring, voices into existing institutions. I think institutions that have existed for very long and have had the runway to become an institution need to start to figure out how they dismantle. And I say that because similar with capitalism or colonization or any of the isms is that you can't fix it.
These aren't fixed things, these are functioning working things. And so people today need to think differently about the purpose of institutions. They need to think differently about the purpose of this idea of education in this very linear process being the only pathway for success or to achieve.
I think between those two fundamental things, other things can then start to grow and sprout and build. But it's something not unique, which is that folks who've had a lot of power for a really long time need to examine why them. How did they get there? And they need to make the choice to be brave and step aside.
[00:43:40] Emily Race-Newmark: I'm just going to link it back to what you're sharing or what we were discussing about earlier around expanding the view to that of many generations beyond oneself, thinking a little bit more collectively versus of yourself, which is an illusion.
[00:43:56] Vanessa Roanhorse: Totally. Totally illusion.
[00:43:58] Emily Race-Newmark: Because you really do play in this arena around economies and money I would like to now dive deeper into that part of your vision because you started to touch on it. In this world, where our idea of what wealth looks like might shift to be more encompassing, more broad of what true wealth could be. Would there actually be a role for money? What would that role be? Where would that flow? I want to dive into that money piece of this vision.
[00:44:22] Vanessa Roanhorse: I'd like to think we get to a place where money is maybe one form, but if money had to play a way, it's to help somebody that's not able to contribute to the holistic system of community.
We need to acknowledge that resources are finite, so communities need to be more local, more place based, more regional, and where we get those things need to be more local, more place based, and regional. And then money could potentially be used as a way to identify things that we aren't going to be able to get local, place based and regional.
However, it's this idea of finiteness, right? How can we structure things like CEO salary caps? How can we structure things like reimagining what we think market rate means because these types of tools is how we get the massive disparity in where money goes and how money moves versus if we think about money more from a place of this should just help us to do this collective achievement for this community to have X, Y, and Z. Then, as a community, they can decide.
I think a lot about other tribes who have community events where at every year, multiple times a year, during harvest, during different parts of maybe the salmon season or buffalo season they come together and they look at the things that are in excess and they distribute it equally amongst people. They open it up to people who don't have those things. That's the kind of regenerativeness of an economy that could happen. And honestly, who knows? Maybe money becomes obsolete and different. Maybe what we start to value is storytelling and teaching. And we start to value learning, and value shared happiness and shared prosperity.
Maybe money doesn't have to be the thing, but at the same time it'll always probably be here. I just hope it's not the only type of commerce we have.
[00:46:35] Emily Race-Newmark: Yes. Yeah.
Thank you for that. This may be related to what you were just saying, but I'm curious what, again, if we're not aiming now for endless growth, endless consumption, more and more. You're nailing it around the idea of local, place based, more community based, what would success look like to you in this new reality?
[00:46:56] Vanessa Roanhorse: Sometimes I think about right now and today and the decisions I have to make and the basic stuff, right? Mortgage is covered, food on the table staff are covered paid. We have money to cover their expenses. My family's got enough resource to take care of what they have. My friends who are in pain, how can I help?
It's really hard to imagine sometimes what this state could be. Partially because I think in my lifetime, in my family's lifetime, we've never, we haven't been allowed to vision freedom. Someone said to me once that was really powerful. They were like, they're ancestors of slaves, we don't know what liberation looks like because we've never had it in the United States.
And in some ways I can dream this abstract future, but it's really hard sometimes to want to share it or even say it partially because we have effectively been taught for generations that the visions and the gifts we're bringing are wrong. And so the freedom to vision is a privilege. And so in some ways, I want to answer it and in other ways, I'm a little hesitant because these are some things you keep close to your heart.
[00:48:24] Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, sure.
[00:48:26] Vanessa Roanhorse: I'm also very hyper aware as a Diné person is when you speak them, when you speak these things you're putting them into the universe and there's a responsibility that you're attaching to them for yourself. For example, when we launched Native Women Lead, one of our co-founders looked at all of us and said, we are all now responsible for this offering we have made to the universe.
And I'll never forget that. So I don't know. I don't have a good answer right now.
[00:48:54] Emily Race-Newmark: That's okay. That's okay. I want to honor what you shared. And I'm hearing there's a sacred aspect to the vision piece. Perhaps some visions are just meant to be kept closer to us or they're not ready to be shared.
I am curious, if we revisit some of the initiatives that are in play right now, including this 1st round of Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship what is possible for indigenous communities through an initiative like that? And what could we dream around a future for indigenous communities?
[00:49:27] Vanessa Roanhorse: My first hope is that these women find a placement in which they can help support and direct the billions, the millions and millions, maybe billions of dollars these funds are sitting on toward indigenous founders that are building incredible things. So I think that the one of the direct things is to move from having 0. 004 percent of all venture capital going to native founders actually get into the 1 percent could be really powerful.
Guarantee these founders that are building, would actually be ready for venture capital would be able to scale and grow to then eventually take the profit and the wealth they've created, and I'm almost 100 percent they would bring it right back to where they come from.
They would invest in all kinds of things. I couldn't even imagine like the things they would invest in, but that would be a direct and a much more immediate impact to people in communities. The other is that our young people would suddenly see themselves in these sectors. Because fundamentally or historically, on the number side, we don't see enough Indigenous people working in the financial investment space.
Ideally, this apprenticeship will help other young Indigenous people, and particularly young Indigenous women, to be like, I can do that. That is how I participate as an Indigenous person in this work around justice and equity and bringing this worldview and perspective to it. So those are like what I see within the next 5 to 10 year opportunity right there.
[00:51:13] Emily Race-Newmark: And I understand that, you're just at the beginning of this process. But what are you all learning so far from taking these initial steps?
[00:51:21] Vanessa Roanhorse: One of the first things out of the early on design was there was an assumption that we heard from a lot of really great folks a lot of folks who have launched various types of accelerators and curriculum and universities around how to work in venture. The push for us was to start to work with young people, folks who don't have children who are early in their career because they're going to have the ability and the flexibility and the drive to do this work.
When we went and we put information out there and we said, Okay, we're going to be launching this. Who would apply? We just did this early surveying of the community to say if we created this, who would join. And my gut was like, I think we're not going to see a lot of folks right out of graduate school or college. I think we're going to see a lot of mid-career. Because that really checks with who's starting and founding companies right now in Indian country.
And lo and behold, we got the data back. The majority of the respondents were mid-career. They were between the ages of 33 to about 50. And part of why I think they responded is because these are women who have effectively worked in some industry, in some sector, that have a relationship to finance and have been in it long enough to know that it doesn't work, it's broken. They're also mature in terms of understanding because the majority of them are also mothers. That the places they're working doesn't really see them and or they acknowledge that they were ready to do something major and different. A career change that gave them more agency was really important. I feel like that was a big one.
Right now, within our cohort the women represent exactly that. They also have very diverse skill sets. The other thing I knew going in, is that a lot of them were going to come from non traditional experiences, and I'm raising my hand physically in this interview because that is me.
And in some ways I wanted to create this because I was like, I don't have a financial background. I don't have a college degree. I learned this all again, baptism by fire. And I know there are more women there out there like me. And that's exactly what we're seeing as well.
We have some women who their career track is aligned to get into this space, but the majority of them are just like, Hey, man, I managed my entire tribes finance. I was the comptroller for an entire tribe where I managed billions of dollars. To, Hey, I was working with small family financial advisors and I started as an administrative assistant and worked my way up to an analyst.
That's what I'm excited about, is that we are demystifying this idea that there's only one pathway to get into this sector. And two, that we're demystifying this idea that we, we can only do this because we're young and we're not molded yet, versus we are coming with tons of great wisdom at every spectrum of the age journey, and we need to be open to that.
[00:54:31] Emily Race-Newmark: I love what you just mentioned about the demystification because I think that that resonates with me also, just as a white woman, it's like, there is this feeling I get in my body sometimes where I shut down. It's that's the financial world not for me, because, I haven't really seen that.
Yeah, I really love that. That's part of what's being transformed. And before we start to wrap things up here, I just want to ask in case there are any indigenous innovators or groups, organizations that you want to point to that are examples of what's blossoming and growing? You mentioned a couple, but is there anyone else you want to just give a shout out to?
[00:55:02] Vanessa Roanhorse: I've given a big shout out to Native Women Lead, The New Mexico Community Capital, and we have a collective called the Futurist Indigenous Women. But I also want to give a shout out to a lot of the new emerging organizations that are Native led, that are, one, creating their own types of funds, whether debt or equity as well as new organizations coming online, supporting Indigenous entrepreneurship and founders.
I would say, one of them would be the Project Dream Catcher out of Arizona. I think they're doing some really incredible stuff. There's the new Creative Indigenous Accelerator that launched. I know I'm missing a ton of people right now and I'm a little embarrassed.
[00:55:42] Emily Race-Newmark: I put you on the spot.
[00:55:44] Vanessa Roanhorse: I wasn't prepared for this.
There's a lot of great thinkers out there. Jacqueline Jennings, she was one of the venture partners with Raven Indigenous Capital, which started in Canada and now is here in the United States. And she also started something called the Fireweed Fellowship in Canada. She's also the forefront. She's been working with us on our session guide for The Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship and bringing in something called the trauma of money. Which is a way in which you actually can learn and teach and unlearn how money has been weaponized against us and ideally rebuild a new relationship with money.
I already called out Edgar Villanueva for his work.
I would say Carolyn Hinton who wrote a book called Indigenomics. Is one of those foundational reads that anyone who wants to really think differently about how Indigenous economies work, needs to read Indigenomics.
And she also has a summit called Indigenomics in Canada, usually it's where it's based.
I think a lot about a lot of these actors and these folks who are doing it. We have Bobbie Reset, who's from Canada, but she's one of the first Indigenous women I know who got a seed round and then a Series A for her company called Virtual Gurus, which we also use here at Roanhorse Consulting.
The shout outs can probably go broad and far, but what I will say to anyone who's curious is that start in your backyard. Because we are here. We've always been here. We just oftentimes are mistaken for not being indigenous, or we don't have enough indigenous community to have a full voice, but we are here. We have thousands of organizations that are in your backyard building these networks and resources and supports.
And I really do believe that if we center relationships, we should center the relationships where we live first.
Yes. Thank you for that. That reminder. We're heading here already naturally, but I'd love to just close with two things. One, just looking at some actions folks can take and then also looking at how we can support you all.
So first from an action lens, if we could invite listeners to pause the podcast right now and take an immediate action, what would that be?
I would find a local indigenous led organization that works in a place that speaks to your heart and donate to them or volunteer right away.
[00:58:05] Emily Race-Newmark: To your point go straight into your backyard and find who's there. Okay. And then if folks could take on a practice of some sort, something to put into practice over time, what would that be?
[00:58:15] Vanessa Roanhorse: I would put into a practice oftentimes that when you're wanting to build relationships, it should start with who are you, where are you from? Not from, here's the thing I want to do and here's how I wanna do it. And I say that all the time because it doesn't matter what kind of meeting I'm in. Everyone's introductions are always like, this is my organization. This is my title, this is my role. These are my educational validations. And here's my pitch.
I always start from a place of this is who I am. This is where I'm from. This is why I'm doing this, which is usually about my family.
And it's more from a place of how can we get to know each other? Because I want partnership and relationship. So I encourage people to spend some time thinking about what does relationship mean to you and does it matter? And if the answer, is it does matter, then we have to rethink what it means to create something together to partner that isn't transactional, but really starts from that place.
And number two, cause there is a number two, that I'm thinking about it. We spend so much time in our heads. This work is heady in the financial industry and I encourage people to try to find where in their heart. This works sits.
[00:59:36] Emily Race-Newmark: And so that might be the answer to this last question around if folks could leave something just to think about what would that be. So perhaps that's the question. I think that's the question.
[00:59:45] Vanessa Roanhorse: That's the question because we all get money intellectually and strategically and tactically, we all understand it. But if we can take a minute to ask ourselves in our heart, what is the purpose and why are we doing this, might open us up to, one, looking at a potential founder differently. Two, thinking differently about what we mean by scale. And three, what is risk?
[01:00:16] Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for connecting us there. Lastly, how might we support the work that you are doing or stay connected with you in some way?
[01:00:23] Vanessa Roanhorse: Obviously we're raising funds for cohort two, so anyone who's interested in supporting that fundraise, please reach out.
We want to work and connect and partner with folks in a meaningful way. And that's really for the Rematriating Economies. But ultimately, I think what I want people to think about is if anyone here is managing a fund or is particularly working and investing in entrepreneurship, is that Indigenous entrepreneurs and Indigenous founders and Indigenous capital, we have to start from a different place in the story around why it matters.
I welcome anyone who really wants to have that conversation to reach out because we can't invest in enough people with what we're building. We need your help to expand and have that ripple effect across the United States and beyond to start helping to move that capital to these folks.
And we're not going to be able to do it alone. So we want to find follow on partnership. We want to find more capital that could be patient and equitable for these folks and we want to move it. And it's not going to happen with just our little team.
[01:01:34] Emily Race-Newmark: So the best way to stay in connection or to reach out would be where?
[01:01:39] Vanessa Roanhorse: You're welcome to go to the Rematriatingeconomies. com website and there's an easy form where you can submit. You're welcome to go to our website at RoanhorseConsulting. com and also submit a form there. That would be the easiest way. Obviously people reach out to me on LinkedIn all the time. You're welcome to do that.
It might be a little bit longer before I reply.
[01:01:59] Emily Race-Newmark: Okay, thank you for that clarity and the invitation. Vanessa, thank you so much for everything that you shared in this conversation. It was a wealth of knowledge and a lot for us to sit with and also act on. I appreciate your time and all the work that you're doing the world.
Thank you.
[01:02:13] Vanessa Roanhorse: Thank you for having me.
