Investing in Indigenous Women
We speak to Agnetha “Jaime” Gloshay and Vanessa Roanhorse, Co-Founders of Native Women Lead, an organisation dedicated to supporting and growing Native American women entrepreneurs and leaders, about Indigenous economies, the challenges facing Native women, and the importance of letting Native women lead.
What is your role in bringing Native women into the conversation around gender-lens investing?
Jaime Gloshay (JG): Vanessa and I are co-founders of Native Women Lead, an organisation focused on supporting Indigenous women, business owners, and entrepreneurs. Everything we do is framed around our BEWE values: that Native women are the Backbone of community; we're Emerging as entrepreneurs and leaders; we’re Weaving together our culture, identity, community, and resources, and we’re Empowering one another to manifest change.
At Roanhorse Consulting, Vanessa’s Indigenous woman-owned business, we do ecosystem building and strategy mapping, and we work with community-based organisations in power building. We sit at a unique intersection, working with investment and philanthropy as well as community-based organisations, communities, and Native women. We're able to push into an unknown space to create conversations, do systems work and move resources.
A lot of our magic is in modelling matriarchy. This concept is inherent to Vanessa and me as Diné women, and for myself as an Apache woman as well. Our cultures are modeled after matrilineal systems - our identity, our language, and how we identify ourselves is, first and foremost, through our mother. That means looking at how our decisions and work affect all living beings. It also brings a level of care, compassion and inclusivity. Our goal is to bring more Indigenous women into this space to continue to power-build.
What does a financial system that serves Indigenous women look like?
Vanessa Roanhorse (VR): First of all, it should look like Indigenous women. We should be in positions of decision making and leadership.
Traditional economies and land resource management should be part of the integration. An Indigenous economy cannot be at the expense of Indigenous women, and it cannot be at the expense of Earth Mother. It can't be extractive or exploitive.
A financial system that serves Indigenous women has to meet the community and the opportunities where they are. No more siloing information, resources and access.
“Indigenous women-owned businesses are an $11 billion industry, without any resources, tools, or real capital. Imagine what it would look like if we invested”
Lastly, it's got to be built on balance, knowing when enough is enough. There's a Western concept of wealth: building businesses, hierarchical structures and wealth accumulation. But there's another concept of wealth within Indigenous communities. These days it’s called “regenerative economy” or “circular economies,” but for us, it’s just traditional Indigenous economy. There’s no point in having too much if the person next to you has nothing, or if they aren't safe, cared for, loved, and have a place in society. We need a financial system that represents all of these pieces.
Why does investing in Indigenous women matter now?
VR: According to an American Express report on the state of women-owned businesses, Indigenous women-owned businesses are an $11 billion industry, without any resources, tools, or real capital. Imagine what it would look like if we invested in Indigenous women: what these incredible, ten-times-hardworking Indigenous women could do if they actually had the right tools and resources at their fingertips. We haven't even activated what's possible.
JG: In our Native Women Lead research, we’ve seen that Indigenous women entrepreneurs are starting businesses not because they want to build wealth for themselves, but because they want to solve a problem. There are a lot of social entrepreneurs and enterprises in our community. They're motivated by their passion, skill set, and community; those are the drivers.
How are current tools and resources failing Indigenous women?
VR: The current tools and resources weren’t made with us in mind, and without us helping to design them. We constantly have to remind donors and investors, while something may have worked in another place with another community, off-the-shelf products have never worked in Indian country.
It's hard to explain why the invisibility of Indigenous people is so traumatic. The process of five hundred years of colonisation has intentionally ostracised us from the financial and economic sectors. When new resources are created, it takes a lot of upstream work just to help our community members trust the opportunity. Even then, we have to take the tools and resources and rework them so they’re culturally relevant and aligned with what we're trying to do.
So it’s not that the current tools and resources are failing Indigenous women. We just haven't even tried to do it right.
What do you feel is missing from the ecosystem?
JG: Representation. I have yet to meet an Indigenous woman fund manager, financial analyst, or wealth manager. I'd love to see more people who look like me and understand our community represented in the ecosystem.
“I have yet to meet an Indigenous woman fund manager, financial analyst, or wealth manager.”
VR: Also missing is valuing and trusting our Indigenous leaders to do what they've always been doing. We see funding going to non-Native-led organisations, which then create efforts for Native activities, bypassing the Native-led organisations who are already doing this work. They may be well-intentioned, but they’re missing the knowledge of what's on the ground and what's already being done locally. That's been a consistent issue in philanthropy since the turn of the century. People don't trust that we know what to do.
What other key barriers and challenges are you facing? And what do you think could be done to address these?
VR: As Indigenous people, we’re less than 1% of the US population, and as Indigenous women, we are less than half that percent. When we leave the comfort of our tribal nations, we are always on our own.
We have very limited resources. We lack intergenerational wealth, if you [use the definition of] the last 130 years. The relationship with the Federal Government has marginalised us. We can't build wealth on our tribal lands, because we don't own our tribal lands. We can't use land as leverage, we can't use our homes as collateral. People don't realise that we have that additional barrier. I believe in sovereignty for our people and our nations, but it adds an additional challenge within the current systems of finance.
80% to 100% of our community’s livelihoods were affected by COVID. Every Indigenous woman’s career that's lost because they had to provide elder or child care is going to be monumental for us. Two-thirds of Native women are the primary breadwinners: we’re the economic stability and support in our community.
Loss of land is a barrier, because everything goes back to the land, back to the Earth Mother. It leads to loss of language and loss of culture, which means we are untethered ghosts in this place. That challenge faces us every day.
What can be done to address these issues? Invest in Indigenous women leaders.
How do you balance acknowledging the barriers and traumas Indigenous women face, while highlighting the opportunity of investing?
“Indigenous wisdom can inform how business and finance move forward. We’re seen as people of the past, but we’re relevant in this moment, especially as the world is scrambling. ”
JG: We look to our ancestors. We show up as the matriarchs that we are. We are reclaiming the narrative and showing that Indigenous people have been entrepreneurial since forever. We've had trade and barter systems that have extended thousands of years and miles and cultures and languages. And we've also have a community and way of knowing that can shift and pivot to changing climate, land, and people.
That reclaiming also means holding on to and speaking our truth, because Indigenous wisdom can inform how business and finance move forward. We’re seen as people of the past, but we're relevant in this moment, especially as the world is scrambling. And we're also people of the future. We have models that extend seven generations beyond us. That's how we think, we're multi-dimensional beings. We think not only with our ancestors, but also with our children and our grandchildren in mind. We think not only with people, but with Earth, land, animals, and resources. We're rebuilding that narrative for ourselves, too. We've seen how harmful patriarchy has been to women and people in general, so we are showing how you rematriate--how you bring balance into this world.
Invest in Indigenous women. The return on investment is catalytic. Invest in Indigenous-led efforts. We do a lot with a little, and what is given is transformational. Let Indigenous women lead, and see us as the experts that we are, and as the solutions to the issues that we face every day.
main image: Melinda Williamson, owner of Morning Light Kombucha