Tara Trudell, Indigenous Women’s Flow Fund [Starting at 02:09]: Hello everybody. My name is Tara Trudell. I reside here in Towa territory in northern New Mexico. Really honored to be amongst all the different pueblos and in community with them. I am a funder with the Indigenous Women’s Flow Fund. I was asked to the table by the Kindle Project to sit with other indigenous sisters.

So I’m really honored to be here to discuss that. I’m also an artist and a mother and a grandmother. And a daughter. And a sister and an advocate for Earth. My pronouns are she and her and Earth. And I’m going to just pass it on over to Sadaf.

Sadaf Cameron, Kindle Project: Hi everybody. I’m also so happy to be here and thank you to Kelsey and Philanthropy Together for hosting this space and for always welcoming the Kindle Project. I love being a part of everything that Philanthropy Together does and Kelsey’s so amazing to work with. So I’m happy to be here today and thank you all for making the time.

My name is Sadaf Cameron. I’m the executive director and co-founder of Kindle Project. We’ve been around since 2008. We function as a grant-making intermediary. So we really are a bridge between donors and communities of impact.

And that can look a bunch of different ways. We manage many special funds. The Indigenous Women’s Flow Fund is just one of 13 programs that we’re managing right now, special funds that we’re managing. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico and I’m currently in Los Angeles. I hope that my internet will be stable, because I’m having some internet problems. I just feel really honored to be able to be here with all of you and to be able to speak with my good friends Hilary and Tara. So thank you.

Hilary Giovalli, Indigenous Women’s Flow Fund: Hello everybody, my name is Hilary Giovale and like Tara and Sadaf I’m also very happy to be here and honored to visit with you all and get to learn a little bit more about your community as well. I live at the foot of a sacred mountain of kinship in land that is today called Flagstaff, Arizona.

This is Diné, Hopi, Havasupai, and Apache pueblo land. And this mountain is a very important being in my life and I would actually say that she’s considered to be a grandmother, and she influences a lot of what I can share with you today. So I just want to acknowledge her.

I come from Celtic, Germanic, and Nordic ancestry. I’m a ninth-generation settler. My ancestors started immigrating here from Germany and Scotland in the 1600s and 1700s and I am a donor to the Indigenous Women’s Flow Fund. And I’m part of the donor cohort as well. So I think that’s all for me for now. Thank you!

Kelsey Barowich: Awesome. Thank you all for your introductions and really grounding us in who you are, your role, where you’re calling from, all that.

So for participants today, we’re going to have a panel discussion and we’ll create some space for Q&A. I’ll be watching the chat. So if a question comes up or you’re resonating with something, please feel free to drop emojis in the chat.

But with that we’re going to dive right into it today. And I’m going to start with this question: What does healing mean to you? And can you share more about the intersection of healing and philanthropy, and how has it intersected your experience of this flow fund? Whomever wants to jump in can jump in first.

Sadaf Cameron: I can start. You know, I said I never wanted to start, but I’m starting. I have thought a lot about this question. What does healing mean to me personally? I think that could be very long winded. I think from the perspective of the Kindle Project, we get to sit in this very privileged position of being able to be this bridge maker between donors and communities. And so we get to witness that kind of feeling that can happen when communities and donors can begin to work together through trust based practices, which is generally what we do.

It’s our methodology by which we are moving money. So I think there we can see that there are instances of healing throughout the process, but I keep landing in this place [of thinking] healing is not linear. It’s not like you start something and then you end the program and healing has happened. It’s not a start to finish process, right?

It’s like, you can take 3 steps forward and then there’s 2 steps back and then all of a sudden the roads intersect to other spaces and so on. I guess for me I feel like healing is a journey. It’s a process. It’s a story. It’s something that we can all engage in, but it’s not stagnant and it requires conscious engagement, conscious presence. So I can stop there.

I mean, I think the intersection around healing and philanthropy for me really comes through with these trust-based practices and bringing people to the table and being able to have a dialogue.

And I always talk about money kind of being the excuse to be able to make pathways by which we can have the conversations in which healing can happen. But I also have questions around healing and philanthropy because I feel like I really wonder if money is the tool, if it really can be, if we can cleanse ourselves from what money has done and what power has done. So I think I have more questions that are unanswered for myself than answers that I could actually present to you. That’s what I’ve been thinking about in this process.

Kelsey Barowich: I love that. Tara, would you like to share your thoughts about the shop?

Tara Trudell: Sure, I can. I’d love to share and thank you Sadaf for sharing.

What does healing mean to me? I’ve thought a lot about this too. I always think about this. I think we all think about what healing looks like and in this context. I would say it was really about allowing myself to remember, so, therefore there is a process of grieving which these little cracks of the awareness. Being asked to come to this table really opened up the trauma and that has been a generational thing, and also even beyond that, since philanthropy is capitalism at its best and just all like just starting that foundation, like where we’re building up from.

And so I didn’t even understand what philanthropy meant when I was asked to the table years ago, by the Kindle Project. And I didn’t even know how to say the word. I stumbled over it. But in observing and being asked and feeling the shift of healing within myself wasn’t just because I was being given resources to flow back into my community, which is a really powerful healing tool in itself, it was to address my own trauma and what that’s like and just not even about philanthropy anymore, just to get down to the value that we have as women and then another label being an indigenous woman, and then being a disabled indigenous woman.

I ran out of money a long time ago. And here I get to sit at a table with other community members and we can create a space where we’re going to trust each other with these resources that are given to us to give back to the community. Trying to always remember that as a resource, and not as a monetary stress or figure has helped me to actually even be here today. I’m a little nervous. I’m a little like, I did all my things that we all do: tinctures, I’ve got the good kombucha, I lit the cedar because I don’t think we need any more sage at this point. If we’re going to come together and share these conversations, it should be a blessing.

And that’s why I can sit here and say that. I think a lot of us shy away from this philanthropy world because it comes with all this pomp and circumstance, but then in the realities we’ve been doing it all our lives, all our generations, we have been givers that have always defined us as our own wealth.

And so I get that back in a way here. And I don’t belong to one reservation. I think I belong to many reservations. I think I belong to the land. So this has really been, to be able to be a sister to many through community because of resources that empower other communities, for that self care that we need so that we can remember and grieve as we heal – isn’t it like what Sadaf said, that nothing’s linear?

And even though when you do, you think you healed, there’s always something that might challenge that. And so, that to me is the intersection of this whole experience for me. It’s just kind of really realizing that. There’s always these other feelings, it’s an ebb and flow, but also there’s some really amazing people the Kindle team has brought–[the people who make] up the Kindle team but also [people] that they brought to the table on all sides. So, that really I think allowed this process because not every table is a human table.

I mean, you know, not everybody agrees on the way money should be distributed, even though we all come from a good place. And here I think the Kindle team, creating that environment of a fertile ground for us to come in and just plant our seeds, is why we’re harvesting this today.

Thank you. And I’ll pass it over to Hilary.

Hilary Giovale: Thank you. Well, it’s so interesting to hear both of you share about that and to think about the 3 different perspectives that we have and how they all weave together in this confluence like these rivers coming together.

So my story with healing in the context of philanthropy: It only began about 10 years ago because that was kind of when I put on the philanthropist hat. Before that, I grew up middle class in a family that didn’t have any extra money, but they cared a lot about social justice and disability and all kinds of equity and things like that.

Then I married into this family that had extra money and was a philanthropic family. And I began putting that hat on and I didn’t feel at all qualified. I felt super intimidated by it. Super overwhelmed and like I would never be sophisticated enough to do that.

But what ended up happening through that journey is that I have begun and it did begin about between 8 and 10 years ago. A process of healing and what happened was that I became aware of my ancestors’ long standing presence on Turtle Island, and aware of the fact that they had participated in colonization, dispossessing indigenous peoples of their lands, enslaving people, and all of this came in like over the course of one evening. I had no idea prior to one evening.

And, so for me, healing, and philanthropy, it happens by looking at the historical context. How did this all come to be? Why is philanthropy even needed right now on this continent? Why are there entire populations and communities that are chronically under-resourced? And why are there chronically over-resourced communities, and communities that are hoarding and have too much?

So I’ve had to go through a whole basically relearning. Relearning my family history, relearning the history of the United States, the history of colonization, and that for me is where the healing comes in. Always be on that journey and that inquiry about these things. And realize that, you know, it’s been a long time in the making.

And also for me, it’s important to realize that just because in this lifetime for some reason I ended up sitting in a seat where I can put on the philanthropist hat, it doesn’t mean that I know more than anybody else. And in fact, it’s the opposite. Like, because I’ve got a lot of privilege I’ve got a lot of blinders on and a lot of filters on that don’t always allow me to see the full picture.

So that’s part of my healing too is just learning to listen and to observe. So I’ll pass it back to you, Kelsey.

Kelsey Barowich: Thank you. What you all shared is so rich and there’s so many layers to it, right? Some of the things that I heard from you all is, you know, part of healing is learning about history, learning about power, and learning about systems and how those all intersect.

And often when we’re engaging in a healing practice, that’s how I’ve been referring to it during this season. It very often leads to more questions instead of leading to answers, right? And sitting with those questions, I think you can start to find really beautiful, deep insight as to how to not only be a healing force for yourself, but a healing force for others and for your community.

That leads me to my next follow up question, which you all started to touch on a little bit.

But as part of your, how have power dynamics and historic inequities gotten in the way of healingp philanthropy and genuine relationships? It can be from the context of, you know, your group or just in your broader experience really sitting with that. I’m wondering, Hilary, since you already started to touch on that a little bit if you want to kind of jump in, I’d love that.

Hilary Giovale: Yeah, sure. Thank you. You know, it’s interesting. Around the same time I put on that philanthropy hat was also the same time that I started building relationships with indigenous communities around where I live. I live right next to the Navajo Nation and Hopi, you know, there’s a lot of native people around where I live.

And so when I started building those relationships, I realized that I had been living in segregation my entire life without being aware of it until that time. That was in my late thirties. So that’s a long time to be living in segregation and be oblivious to the fact that you are.

That’s all about the power dynamics. The fact that you know you can be living where I live and not have any relationships or any understanding of what’s going on with the indigenous communities – that speaks to the power dynamics to me.

In the last decade I’ve had a steep learning curve to learn how to be in a relationship with those communities to learn how to make different kinds of relationships with white communities with my own family, etc. And sometimes those power dynamics get in the way of healing and also, you know, I feel like there’s been an incredible amount of movement when I think back over the last decade. There’s been a lot of movement toward healing, toward breaking those power barriers down or at least becoming aware of them and seeing them for what they are.

So it’s kind of like both/and for me. I’ll pass it on. Which one of you guys would like to speak next? Sadaf?

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Sadaf Cameron: Sure, I was just thinking of you as you were. Talking from a Kindle perspective because we’re again, we’re an intermediary. I feel like there’s got to be like a plug for an intermediary when we’re dealing with historic trauma and when we’re dealing with power dynamics because there is so much trauma that has accumulated in the relationship between the “philanthropist”, the “savior”, which comes in many forms in the community.

That is just historic. It’s innate. It’s happening now. It’s happened in the past.

And so I guess from the position of the intermediary, I’m like, well, when you have trauma within a family, when you have historic trauma within a family, when you have power dynamics, power over, within systems and societies, we ask for a third party, right?

We often need assistance, right? Because there is so much drama in those relationships, we look to counselors, we look to mediators, we look to facilitators and so I just keep thinking about the role of the intermediary in healing and in power dynamics because it can neutralize in a bunch of different ways.

I also was thinking when you were speaking, Hilary, around what we’ve noticed, both with our flow funders, so our community based decision makers, and our donors, when they sit in the position of power and privilege with money, it’s incredibly isolating. So most people that we work with, they’re like, “I feel completely isolated in my giving. I don’t have a community. I often feel like I have to hide from my money.”

Either it comes with shame or it comes with this kind of intimidation around the pressure around having to solve the world’s problems because you have the money. Then there’s the pressure of having to select people and selecting the right people and then there’s pressure from, you know, trustees or family members that might have judgment about who you’re funding.

And then with the community-based decisionmakers we’ve witnessed those people giving away resources also move into isolation with their money. They often want to be anonymous. They don’t want their community members, members of their community to know that they sit in a position of power or privilege. They don’t want to be named as a giver.

And so there’s this thing that we’ve witnessed around money and power that can be really isolating and that isolation creates these compartments, right? So you’re in a way factoring into the power dynamics becoming even more divisive in their own ways because everybody’s become isolated and the more isolation we have, the more trauma we have, the less we understand each other. And so because I think that money is really an excuse to get everybody at the table, it’s like these trust-based practices become tools for empathy, right?

Empathy is the thing that can take us, move us out of this isolation. You know, we often have community based decision makers be like, “Oh my god, I had no idea how hard it was to move money. I had no idea the amount of pressure it was to actually have to move money.”

We’ve had community-based decisionmakers say, “God, I really want to trust the community that I’ve given money to, but I haven’t got a report,” or “I haven’t, you know, I don’t know what’s happened with the money and I feel like I’m responsible for that.”

So there’s this way in which like – that’s why I kinda opened with this question around like, can money really heal and like, is there an intersection of healing and philanthropy?

Money does these things. Money and power creates these systems of isolation that then perpetuate the trauma. And so I guess it’s like, how do we surreptitiously and maybe not even surreptitiously, how do we confront isolation? How do we confront isolation in our healing and how do we actually create pathways in which there’s not only empathy, but a way in which we can begin a conversation?

Because healing begins with a conversation. Healing cannot happen in isolation from my perspective and from what I’ve seen if there’s an intersection with philanthropy it has to happen in community.

And so how do we break down those walls? And again, I think the intermediary can really help because donors coming to communities with power dynamics without it being acknowledged is continuing to kind of, it is definitely perpetuating that very system that we’re trying to break apart.

Tara Trudell: Thank you, Sadaf and Hilary. Okay, so yeah, I got some thoughts on power dynamics and historic inequities. It’s really interesting how many people when giving money hold that as power over you.

And, when I came into philanthropy just to sit at the table and another table, historic inequities, you know, indigenous people are always considered as being poor. You know, like the “poor Indian,” the reservation. I grew up in Oakland, California back in the day, in the 60s and 70s.

I stood in line for food stamps with my family. With my mother and my siblings, with all my friends wrapped around the block so we could get this fake little paper. I knew that there was a pie at the end of that line that was made by the women of the Black Panthers.

I grew up healthy and happy. I never had a problem being poor until people treated me poorly. Okay, after my divorce when I found myself with four children and a spouse who was mentally ill, who had a brain injury and felt better not to pay child support, I found myself rebuilding my life and the value of what a woman who was at 0, if not in the negative, I found out the hard way.

But I got through and I persevered and when I showed up at one of the tables, are just, just the way that I felt grateful to have this world of philanthropy, but also realizing that the hoops are no different than the Income Support Office if we’re going to make people fit into what we think that they should be to deserve financial assistance. And I was coming from the perspective of being just a woman, a mother of four, by myself. I wasn’t thinking of it as even being indigenous yet. I didn’t even know what I was yet.

I was just trying not to lose my mind and try to pay the bills. I remember going to a local foundation to pick up a check and they didn’t have it even though they said they had it. And then it turned into a big ordeal. They said, “Well, we mailed it, or we didn’t mail it,” and I went and sat in the car and cried because I had to pay the insurance that day. And my eleven-year-old son at the time was like, “It’s going to be okay.” And I’m just saying, “Oh my god, the trauma!” and passing it on right here.

I don’t understand why anybody with money feels that it is a powerful tool to be put over anyone. And that’s why I keep coming to the table. I would like to learn about this. And it didn’t matter who had it, whether it was somebody who made money off the mine in Africa or the woman who’s gente in my rasa giving me the check, but not giving me the check, because you know, why should I deserve this check?

I’ve had to work through all of that since the past maybe eight years that I’ve been with Kindle and I have. And I am always slightly offended when I go to a group of well-meaning women, and they say not to ask those people for money, like I would.

And this has happened before. It’s like we have to have rules to be around people with money. That is where we talk about, or I think about, decolonizing this whole platform if that’s how we are always going to approach to protect people with money and to feel that everybody who doesn’t have money is wanting them. When it’s not that way for some of us, it’s about relationship building and it’s about community. And it’s about the wellbeing of the people who are taking care of the land.

That’s the genuine relationship, the outcome that I feel that we’ve been able to accomplish with the Indigenous Women’s Flow Fund, and the encouragement, and you have these little things come up about philanthropy and their rules, like we need reports and we need this and that, when in reality we don’t need anything but the well-being of the people.

And, I’m just like really waiting for that one day to be like, trusting that outcome. Reciprocity doesn’t always come immediately. Reciprocity sometimes is relationship building within communities and kind of redefining what that looks like.

Like land back, rematriation, is it the elder who now can pay her bills? Are we rematriating the activists out there that way? Like there’s so many ways and we just gotta be willing to lean into that. Because right away, even using power dynamics, we’re talking colonial words there, power dynamics. Like we have power – somebody has power over somebody else and we got to be careful about that too even at the table with five sisters.

We’re not helping anyone. We’re showing up but we’re leaving somebody behind. You know, the Canadian geese always do it better than us. They never leave their wounded behind. And I feel like that’s like my intent and my purpose here is to just kind of keep learning and I don’t want to offend anybody with anything I say, I’m just giving you the personal experience of somebody who’s really fortunate to be here.

But even if I wasn’t here at this table, I’d still be figuring out a way to do something for my community just like I did before any that came to help me pay my bills. You know, it’s that commitment we have.

Because that’s healing: the more I address my own grief and remembering, I can be there for somebody else in a way that is going to be a little stronger and then maybe that person did not know that they themselves [could be]. So I don’t want to keep rambling there, but I hope that that kind of addressed it.

And I love everybody for showing up, like for philanthropy. I’m like, right on, man. That’s great. Like it’s just great and I feel for the trauma that people have with too much money, I’m like, wow, because I never even knew that to be honest. I never knew that until I learned about everybody’s feelings and how, you know, being empathetic a little bit broader. I just didn’t consider that. But I can see it now and I have a lot of empathy for that, but I also think, lean into that. Lean into it, you know?

These reports and outcomes like I think we should reconsider what they look like by indigenous cultures that don’t have reports and outcomes, because we are rebuilding 500 years of this genocidal madness. We’re not there yet. I don’t know when it will be there yet. But thank you.

Kelsey Barowich: Yeah, thank you for sharing. I think one of the themes that I’m really sitting with and hearing from you all is how vital and important community is around healing work. And around space to process all of it. Just like living, in general.

Sadaf, you said it where it’s like healing doesn’t happen in isolation. That’s something that I’m revisiting a lot. And when I look at my own practice of healing and social justice, there have been so many moments in my life where I’ve hyper fixated on like, oh my god, everything I’m doing isn’t enough or no amount that I can give will ever cover the world that we want to build.

The reframing that I’ve been really sitting with over the last few years is that, yeah, when we look at our individual actions, it won’t be enough, because it’s not supposed to be about one individual. Tara, just like you were saying, it’s about community. I alone can’t envision the future of our dreams. But we, together, can.

And so that leads me to my follow up question: what does it look like and what is made possible when we root ourselves. In community with each other and in healing? And I’m going to let you all have a minute with that one because I know it’s a big one.

Sadaf Cameron: I have something I could say about this. When my beloved Tara was speaking, she was talking about “power over” and she can’t imagine why somebody with money would want to hold, you know, power over money over a community. And I think part of what I’ve noticed is the reason why that can happen is that people that have inherited wealth in particular, their self worth is tied to money.

Their self worth, they’ve been validated by generations that have said your self worth is tied to your money. They’re not allowed to actually be whole people. They’re not recognized. From my experience of 15 years of working with people that have wealth, they don’t have the same kind of resourcing that maybe myself, Tara, and Hilary had, you know.

I grew up in a refugee family, and my family is from Afghanistan. We were also, you know, incredibly poor. Where we were “poor” in resources, we were wealthy in the community.

We had everything taken care of. It’s like Tara was talking about. It’s like, I didn’t actually ever feel like I was poor because we were rich in community. We will always have things that were taken care of.

And it kind of goes back to what I keep talking about like money creates isolation. And so the privilege that I have had to get close to people that have had inherited wealth, that isolation has created – there’s the isolation and then that isolation coupled with what you are worth is your money. That’s your worth. You don’t have any other worth. You’re not, you don’t get to be smart or beautiful or be part of a community. You’re kind of alone and like your self worth is tied to the fact that you can give, right? That you have the means to be able to be a savior.

And so I think that that is where it can kind of come out sideways where it’s not necessarily like, a power over. For sure, there are plenty of examples of people with money and power that use power over, but I think generally for the donors that are actually trying to do good and trying to do right and trying to be rooted in healing, Kelsey, maybe they wouldn’t actually call it that. I think it comes out sideways because it’s like the validation in self worth is so tied to their money and so tied to their ability to be able to give.

And this is a thing that we can see when, you know, for Kindle Project, we work in participatory grant making, so we work in trust based practices. So we’re working with donors that are ready to say, “My self-worth is more than just my money, so much so that I’m actually willing to give away this power that I have and let other people sit in the seat that I have.”

And once a donor can get there and be like, “Okay, I don’t have the power to give anymore,” then there’s like this pathway that is created. Maybe this is part of the answer to your question, Kelsey, like what becomes possible. There’s an opportunity for more wholeness. There’s an opportunity for us to have a sense of self worth beyond just having money and giving and saving.

Or I can be a part of a community – all of a sudden there’s a resourcing that can happen, right? And so for the Kindle Project, we never do our giving practices in isolation; it always happens in the community.

So with the Indigenous Women’s Flow Fund, there’s a cohort of women that are giving together. They’re in community, they’re supporting one another, but there’s also a cohort of donors because the donors actually also need community. They also need friendship. They need that kinship, especially since they’ve been taken away from a major chunk of their identity, which is like, “I’m a donor and I have the ability to help and serve.’

So it’s this empathy builder thing again. I just have so much compassion for wealthy people. I walked into this work with a real chip on my shoulder and feeling really angry at systems and angry at people that had more than me and my family. And I have come out of this 15 years later and I am like, “I’m so glad that that wasn’t my experience,” because the trauma of wealth is so massive.

Money creates – it’s like an anemia. You become anemic for love and nourishment. I could just go off about that, but I thought I would share that as part of a half baked answer for you, Kelsey.

Hilary Giovale: Wow, you really got my wheels turning, Sadaf. And the person who came to my mind was a dear, dear sister friend of mine named Clarissa. And she passed away a little less than a year ago. She was a Chakana community organizer. She lived in northern New Mexico. And when we began our relationship, again, it was about 10 years ago that we met, we started having these very frank conversations and I would tell her about the family situation that I was in.

And all of the taboos about it and the isolation that comes from those taboos. You’re not supposed to talk about this, you’re not supposed to admit it, you’re not supposed to acknowledge this, you’re supposed to be discreet, this is how you behave in a tasteful way, etc, all of these things.

So I was telling her about it and she said, “Sister, you need to be honest with people about what you’re dealing with, because that’s what really allows people to trust you.” And when she first told me that, it was terrifying to me and I’m not even somebody who grew up with inherited wealth, right?

I’m a newcomer to this and still you acclimate very quickly into these norms by watching people and how they behave around you. It was terrifying, but I decided to try it on. And so, what’s happened is that as I’ve been in community, both here where I live as well as, you know, with the work that we’re talking about with Kindle Project and the Indigenous Women’s Flow Fund as well as other funding projects that I’m part of and even projects that don’t even involve money,  like there are lots of times when I’m just showing up and helping to wash dishes or something like that.

But I’m just transparent. It’s like, I married into this family. I have some money to give sometimes. I’m descended from colonizers. I grew up with totally unquestioned white normativity. I have a lot of blind spots. And I’m just here to show up and be part of this community, with all of these flaws that I have.

And what I have found is that showing up in that way – and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this, I’ve heard it over and over again from different communities that I’m part of and all kinds of intersecting ways and people who don’t even know each other and people who are all over the country, I hear it all the time. I received the feedback that when you show up in that way, you become a relative.

And that’s what came to me when you asked that question, Kelsey, was like that’s what’s possible it’s that you actually become family. Because families look out for each other. Family doesn’t let somebody drop behind. Family recognizes that everyone has issues, right? We all have issues. So that’s what I see happening over and over and I’m extremely heartened by that.

I feel like, I know we’ll probably get into decolonization more at some point, but that to me is what decolonization is too. It’s becoming relatives with each other and behaving in ways that relatives should by taking care of each other.

Tara Trudell: Thank you both. Yeah, I agree with, you know, the rooted part. It’s definitely about showing up, you know. Like this, I cannot stress enough the importance of relationship building. And trusting that. And I’m going to give you an example of Marian Naranjo who is an elder at Honor Our Pueblo Existence (HOPE), a nonprofit here in Santa Clara Pueblo. And I’ve known Marian for a really long time.

I’m there on feast day. I showed up with tortillas. And, I met her and I volunteered to help her with her house to make ceremonial bread and just whatever resources I had. And at the time I was a multi-media artist. This was before I got sick, but I would have had a lot of energy and I did a lot of things so I just asked her how I could support her and help her, and if she needed money to buy special firewood, cause there’s three different kinds of woods that you burn for the special ash to make this bread.

And I would do fundraisers and I would sell beads and, I make beads, by the way, out of paper and I would figure out ways to raise money for her. And, her nonprofit has been around for a really long time and struggles every year to maintain itself and this was about five years ago. I started relationship building with her and when I was asked to be a part of this able of indigenous women flow funders, I immediately thought of Marian, and how this could benefit her and the work that she needs to do and that she struggles to do as an elder with health problems. And as an elder who is really involved with all the nuclear mess going on here in Los Alamos, and just many, many things and preserving culture.

And a lot of times showing up in a community is you just show up and you stand there and you wait till they tell you what to do and you wait till they guide you what to do. You just kind of like, it’s a lot of humbling learning and listening. We got together in May and we were all able to meet with Marian, everybody came together. The funders, Indigenous Women’s Flow Funders. And I struggle with the word of calling these cohorts “donors” anymore because I think that every time I say “donor” it will put them above “us,” and we’re all here together.

But we all went to visit Marian with her in the ceremonial house and there was a moment there where I sat there with all these indigenous women, and all these amazing cohorts who have resources more than we have, like the financial part, and it was a vision that is ancestral.

It was that it transcended any emotion that we could really, each one of us, describe to you. Because we rooted. We rooted as relatives, we rooted as community, we rooted in relationships that may have frayed at some point, that was a moment.

How do we remember that so that we remember to go back and check on Marian? Do we need it to be through an organizational meeting? Does it need to be this way? How do we remember as individuals to go back on our own? And I think that’s like something that can be possible in relationship building. I brought everybody to Marian because Marian is my elder and I want everybody to have an elder like Marian.

But I also trust people to go on their own to continue building that relationship with Marian. I shouldn’t have to be the initiator anymore, because we are rooted now in the community. The trees take care of each other, and everybody knows that. Trees take care of each other, and we can do the same and wherever we are.

And Marian is really grateful. I have no problem being transparent in my support for her because we should all have an elder that we support, especially one who’s been doing this work for 40 some years, who has no health insurance, who has none of the benefits. This whole thing about – I just want to say this: I think a lot about reports and showing what we do, but you have to understand some things about ceremonial things. We don’t show those on Instagram. We don’t show pictures, nobody will see the stones that are inside that ceremony house, unless you walk in that house because they are not to be photographed.

There’s some elders that still do very traditional ways of being a community and we have to have we have to hear them and be there for them. And they totally move in a different way. Trust me, it is infuriating at times, but why is it infuriating when that’s the way of the elders? So it’s my lesson, not hers.

That to me is being rooted in community. It’s like, you just got to keep going back. Or just being there. It’s not about going back. It’s just being there. It’s checking in.

And the thing about it with Marian is because she’s had the support in this amazing group of people that come together to look at communities that might need support, that organization that might be overlooked, she’s been elevated to like the grandmother of the Pueblo there, which takes a lot of work to do when you’re in a male-dominated Pueblo, you know, as a woman. And so these are the kinds of healing that’s going on here.

And Marian would probably not have been able to do that. We would not have had support for her in the past 3 years. It would have been much harder for her to reach that. And it’s unfortunate that she has to work that hard to get to that point to be recognized as a grandmother of the Pueblo. But that’s how all these different dynamics work in each different tribe, each different culture, there’s all these other layers.

That is like taking, it’s not only being rooted, it’s like going back to the grandmother tree, and watering it. And not forgetting it. And that’s Marian.

So I just want to give an example of the reality of it. We start here, and then look at us here! You know, we just all felt that moment of what it means to be in the presence of rematriation as it’s happening. And it’s a physical thing. It actually happens more often than I think we give it credit for, but it’s usually going to be with our elders that we’ll find that.

And I feel like those are the ones that aren’t going to be keeping up with it, the way that we need them to keep offering them resources. I encourage relationship building. I know it sounds like it’s really hard for people with money and it’s really hard for people without money. I mean, I feel you, but let me tell you what, when you don’t have money to take care of your kids, that’s scary. Not that it’s not scary for you either, but, I think that’s always going to be my trauma.

It’s like, okay, okay, you know, it’s good. But when you live on an honorarium from art piece to art piece, that’s just my reality. All the time. But you know, we keep believing in what we do, we keep showing up and that’s the healing. And I’ll pass that back to you, Kelsey, thank you.

Kelsey Barowich: Thank you for that. A word that’s really sticking out to me in the story that you shared is transcendence. And I think that the story you shared of the ripple effect, right, that’s what’s possible when we lean into these things, is the ripple effect to transcend so much trauma and oppression and history that wants us to be isolated. That doesn’t want elders to thrive. And I think it makes a lot of sense to me here just hearing that word transcendence, right? The possibility is transcendence. And that just is very, very powerful.

For you all in your different roles, I know one of the big pieces that is coming up in this discussion and I know it comes up and your work, is that work of decolonizing. And I know about our series, this is actually one of the first times that we are going to be talking about decolonizing and I know it’s interesting to our participants.

And so I would love to hear more from you all about, you know, you’ve shared a little bit, but what does that decolonizing practice look like as collective givers? Regardless of which cohort you’re in or what role you’re in, you are in this ecosystem of collective givers. So I would love to hear about what that practice looks like for you all.

Sadaf Cameron: Hilary is ready to go. You can tell.

Hilary Giovale: I can, but I don’t want to jump in if one of you would like to start.

Kelsey Barowich: This I think is what my house likes to call the Nice Olympics where everybody’s like, “No, you can pick what we order for tonight!” or “Yeah, you can decide what ice cream we buy!” I am going to create space for whoever wants to step up to step up and I promise that each person will get some time to speak on this topic for sure.

Hilary Giovale: Okay. Let’s see, when you ask that question, Kelsey, I saw this image in my mind of what colonization does. And it breaks things. You know, it breaks. It breaks communities apart. It tears people off their land. It severs family ties. It consolidates a bunch of resources and yanks them away from one group and into the possession of another group.

And so, to me, that was the image that I saw. It’s just like this shattering and this fracturing. That’s what colonization does. And so to me decolonization is like stitching it back together. I think that every single person, no matter what your background is, how you grew up, how much money you have or don’t have, what culture you come from, everybody has a gift to play in the process of decolonization.

Everyone has almost a sacred role that they can offer. And each one of us with our gifts, with our temperaments, the circumstances that we’re in, the land where we live, everything about our life experience creates an alchemy that lets us like, pull that thread forward. And connect to another thread.

So I almost see it as like, it’s like weaving a web. Decolonization is like connecting all the points of a web just like a spider does and then it’s creating this image of connectivity. But it’s coming out of the past and in many cases a present that’s very painful and has created incalculable harm. But it’s like working with that at the same time to gradually and gently repair it.

I’ve heard, you know, Tara and Sadaf talk about this too, to me, it’s so much about relationships. That’s how decolonization happens. It’s not something that you can do in your mind. It has to come from the heart and through trust, trusting self, trusting others. Through relationality and, for me also, a really important part of that has been spending time on the land here.

So I, you know, I’m out 5 to 7 days a week on the land here and I don’t think that I would have been able to undertake the process of decolonization that I have unless I was able to do that. It’s integral to the whole thing. I’ll pass it on.

Tara Trudell: I can, I’ll go. Thank you, Hilary. Yeah, that’s always a good question, huh? You know, decolonize. Right? Like it means, it means to me, basically dismantling all the control over all indigenous peoples over all lands. That’s it.

And every time we come to the table, it means everything we think, to rethink what that actually means because you know, we’re going by philanthropy’s rules from the get go every time I sit at the table. We’ve already had the foundation set here by wealth. And I think let’s start thinking about the foundation of adobe bricks and what it means to really build from the Earth up.

If we really want to decolonize, you know, we have to break the control over us as people and now it’s even the mindset. It’s not even, like, it’s the way we think, like, are we practicing white supremacy in our actions? Are we practicing misogyny in our actions? Are we practicing – like what we are going to do with land back? How are we rematriating? You know, how are we putting the value of money as something that matters more than the well-being of a community that might not be able to prove that they should receive resources?

I mean we got the Navajo Nation here with no water now. You know, because the government has now stepped in. Let’s break it down – like decolonization, if we’re going to go and dismantle all that and when we talk about decolonizing philanthropy, then let’s just start over.

Like let’s have a voice. Let’s think about what it means to give. I just, I think decolonizing, we can’t even decolonize all the land that belongs to us. Because it’s all of them. You know, and I think sometimes we can get stuck on that word.

So it’s really about, every time you have a conversation, rethink what you’re saying and how you’re receiving it. Where’s that flow with that? You know, we have rules – why do we have rules, why are there rules? Why can’t I talk to a donor? And this isn’t in this group. It was a long time ago. Like, what’s the fear there? You know, you do, you’re going to like me and want to hear what I have to say because I’m a strong woman and we have some similarities and I feel for you and I have empathy. But it’s not that I want anything from you.

And so as soon as we all step at the table, we shouldn’t be thinking that. That’s the best way to decolonize anything is to come to the table with an open mind and sharing and trusting in what that process will be about. And I know that we all have our background. Hilary has her background, Sadaf has her background.

And see, I have mine too, and I grew up in the movement. I grew up in the American Indian movement back in the day. I know the realities of what it means to be a woman. I know people get killed. I know water’s taken away. I know all these things. You know, I know what it’s like to be poor and experience all these things and then I know it’s like to be left raising four kids.

I know what it’s like to survive. And I just want to be taken care of, like a lot of women do. We just want to be taken care of. Take care of our children, take care of the land, and be able to pay our bills. We want to stop proving to people –  Somebody told me, well, that’s your resistance. I’m tired of resisting. I want to flow like water, like resources. And whether I have these and you have financial, money, whatever goals. Gems, food. Shelter?

What do we have that we bring together that we share? How much on the plate can we divide? There’s all these things – that’s decolonization to me. And I’m still learning it, still exploring it. I’m not right. But this is just kinda like what’s coming up every time I see the word. And we have these every time it comes up that we should do something a certain way. I was like, wait, wait, wait.

But is that a colonial tactic? Because if it is, let’s take a couple of steps back and see what it’d be like to maybe follow like, what would nature do? You know, what would it feel like an elder do? What would the elders of our group say? You know, what does the wind have to say on this?

That’s decolonization. And thank you for hearing me.

Sadaf Cameron:  Oh, so it’s a really tough panel to follow up on last. I’ll try. Decolonizing. Well, decolonizing is such a buzz word these days. Like everybody is decolonizing everything. They’re decolonizing leadership. They’re decolonizing their organizations. Everybody’s dismantling. It’s a time of great dismantling.

And we’ve been talking about this a lot internally at Kindle, like around trends, particularly trends in philanthropy and where trends can have this like really potent intention but then can become watered down as they become like, a call to action, right?

Because all of a sudden these words don’t, they kind of lose their meaning. So, I’ve been thinking about like, we don’t necessarily use language of decolonizing within the Kindle Project. It’s just not in our Lexicon. It’s, you know, like one of my colleagues says just like, “how to not be an asshole.” For lack of a better way of saying it, it’s like, how do you actually show up as a good person, you know? Those are words, that is a way in which I can resonate with the decolonizing.

And then I think personally, I just want to say on the side of decolonization, you know, Afghanistan has its own history of colonization. But things were not necessarily good before outsiders came in. Like there was a lot of tribal shit that was happening finally that was really bad. And so I think sometimes when I think about decolonizing, I’m like, is it, are we trying to get back to a place pre-colonization? Because in my context, it wasn’t that great actually. It was pretty violent. It was pretty aggressive. It was pretty patriarchal.

And so then I think about power and I think about how we can just be better humans and that’s how I relate to this. Like, how do we become better humans? Because there’s the trends, there’s the decolonizing trends, there’s these trends that we’re supposed to get on board with. And then it’s like, are we trying to pre-date something? And then I think about what was happening before and I’m not sure it was all that great either.

So how can we better be better humans on the planet right now? That’s a little bit the way that I look at this and the way that I relate to this thing that has become so trendy.

I think on a very practical level for the Kindle Project as an intermediary, decolonizing really means, how do we create containers and spaces of trust in which people can actually from the ground, from the community, that are on the front lines actually take leadership? Like how can we do that? How can we create safe spaces? How and I mean, of course, what is a safe space, but how can we actually create containers in which possibility can flourish?

And that’s really what Kindle Project is trying to do. And so we can take the burden off of fundraising. We can take the burden off with due diligence. We can decolonize till the end of time and we still have to report to the IRS. We still have to do due diligence. There is still a system by which we have to move money and Kindle Project is largely responsible for that.

So it’s like, how can we take the burden off of those that don’t have the means, resources, or the time to actually be able to do that? That is a value that we can bring to the table that I think is like decolonization. It’s an example of how we’re trying to decolonize but we also live in a colonized world.

We can do away with reports, but we actually, Kindle, have to write reports. We still actually have to be within a system. And so how do we be within the system that is colonized, but it’s still actually the system, and relieve the burden on others, to be able to create possibility from the ground up? And who knows what happens. Who knows what will happen.

I feel like all of this work is a little bit, it’s like, “Just show up as a good person,” and it’s also kind of experimental as well. What can happen when you actually give opportunities to communities? What happens when you create safe spaces? What happens when you can create a clear container for people to work from? So a lot of what I feel like our job is to do, is creating spaces.

Be in the system so that others can, so the Taras of the world can do away with reports, do away with everything. But somebody’s got to report. So I’m glad there’s somebody that’s actually saying that and I’m glad it’s a Tara that has the opportunity to say that and I’m also happy that Kindle can create the platform by which you can say that and we can still be in compliance.

Being guided by the community, allowing the community to actually lead processes is decolonized, and that looks a bunch of different ways, right? Every community is different. Working with the indigenous women is very different from the cohorts of Black women that we work with. Very different.

They are talking about different things. And so when you’re in this practice, that Kindle is in being an intermediary, it means that you have to be open and you have to be malleable and you have to be flexible and you have to be nimble because every community is going to need something different. And it’s there’s not one community process that’s going to look exactly the same as the next.

There are no real stacking functions or streamlining things. Yes, I can streamline processes and paperwork internally, but when you’re working with communities, you actually have to be like, it’s going to take time.

It’s going to take time and you’re going to have to come into these processes with an open heart. Kelsey, the way that you started this, you know, some ground rules, things to remember, it’s like, yeah, you’re going to have to sit in a lot of discomfort sometimes and it’s going to be discomfort that you may not anticipate.

And so that’s a decolonized practice. Is like, how do you actually sit with discomfort and allow discomfort to be in a space but not be reactionary to it? How can Kindle Projects create those spaces?

And I also think, there is, for me, the decolonized way or how to show up as a better human also means the time is a big piece of this work, because philanthropy works on a fiscal year, right?

We work on a fiscal calendar. Money in, money out. There’s a fundraising season. We all know it’s the fall. We all know that we have to hustle for that. We all know that we have to do our books and we have to submit to the IRS in March. There are things that are calendared and scheduled beyond our control that we just actually have to answer to.

But community processes don’t work on that timeline. Indigenous women make their decisions on the new moon. They look at cycles of nature and that is the way by which they are letting go of their processes. The lead is they’re actually being led by forces that are greater than just the human framework.

So how do we as an intermediary report to the IRS, report to our donors, report to the timelines, the frame, all of all of the paperwork, all of the admin and honor the cycles of the moon? Because that is what the community has asked for.

So what it actually takes, I mean, we come to the table. As a team we have to rethink our structures and frameworks constantly. Constantly. We can come up with a plan because donors want a plan. They want to see what you’re going to do. They want to see your plan so that they can invest more money and you can come up with a plan and then you have a community meeting and it’s completely shredded up because there’s a cycle of nature and you have to honor that and there’s a sacred mountain and the sacred mountain said one thing and so then you have to like go back, scramble, and do another structure.

So all of that to say is there’s a piece of decolonizing that’s really about time and relationship to time and how you relate to time. And so I think in a decolonized practice, these things are really not linear, like healing. It’s just not linear. It’s 3 steps or 2 steps back. Intersection, you’re taking different branches.

Really trying to understand where rigidity is really important and where you can actually be malleable and how much of that is actually psychological and is self-imposed. I’m a victim of this all the time as ED where I want things to go a certain way, or see a trajectory. I’m constantly worried about fundraising, but then I also have to be like, okay, what do I have to be rigid about and what can I be open about in working with community practices?

And then I think the last thing that I would say around decolonizing other than trusting and relationships and building off of what my dear friends have said is, I think, that showing up as a good human. There are no experts, nobody gets to be an expert in this space. Kindle is not an expert. I’m not an expert as an ED. Nobody’s an expert. Everybody comes with experience and everybody comes with unique experience and everybody comes with personal experience and everybody comes with their traumas and their experience and their whatever is going on with them emotionally, psychologically, and so, I think that that is also one of those practices.

Philanthropy does a really good job of creating heroes. That’s what we do. We find one person that represents one community that really wants to uplift them and then that one person then gets all the speaking gigs and writes the book and it’s a lot of pressure. And I feel like that is a very colonized way too. Is like finding our heroes, finding our saviors and uplifting them and all of a sudden they’re on a calendar.

And so I think actually, it’s a practice of humility, right? There are no experts. Nobody gets to be an expert. We all are in this together. Thank you.

Kelsey Barowich: Oh my goodness, y’all, you are giving me such nourishment and richness. So I just want to react to a couple of things and, for our audience to know, I’m leading into my last question. So if you all have questions, now’s the time to start ruminating and maybe starting to type them out.

Some of the things that I’m hearing and what y’all are saying is to be wary of the buzzwords, which I think is a really big one for me personally. You always see these different trends and a lot of the time what I’ve witnessed the deeper into this work that I go is that some of the most “simple” actions are actually quite revolutionary.

And I have a very vivid memory of moving toward young adult life and having this moment of like, oh my God, am I living my values? Am I doing all these things right? Really just that perfectionist in me was raging.

And it wasn’t until I started to be in community with folks who weren’t sitting in this soup, so to speak, where I was like, oh. It’s actually quite revolutionary. For me to choose to live not only with my partner, but also my closest friend. And also one of our closest friends. And when you get caught up in the real buzzword trends, I think there are moments where it’s like, oh, this really can be simple.

That’s not to say that it isn’t hard and that’s not to say that sometimes it isn’t complex. So that was one thing that was coming up for me as I was listening to y’all. And then within that other piece too, I was sitting with the importance of roles and knowing your role. Whether it’s in a group discussion space or leading as an intermediary or as a community leader making a decision about funding, right?

Sitting with where your role is in your community, in your organization, in your group. And then really sitting with the thought, how can I shift this work and this role and use it as a tool? For healing, for justice, for transcendence.

Because again, we’re in a system that’s designed to say, “You need to do everything” when that’s actually not the case, right?

Sadaf, your role as an intermediary to say, I saw the report to the IRS, but I’m not going to put that stress onto our community because this is our role to hold it. One of the things that I sit within my role at Philanthropy Together is I need to build relationships with people so I can have folks [here]. We even share and learn from each other. Right, it’s not my role to sit every month and say, “hey, I’m going to talk about what I want to talk about,” right? It’s for me to find the folks that can help bring our whole community along the way.

And then one of the other things that I’m sitting with – and it’s because I was listening to a podcast today and I’ll share this in the chat later, Third Wave Fund has a podcast that they release and they just did one on transforming conflict and accountability.

And one of the things that hearing you all talk about the practice of decolonizing or the practice of not being a shitty human being, one of the things that was said was, you know, the goal is not to create a world where no harm happens because harm is going to happen. We’re all different. We all come with our different experiences as was mentioned earlier.

The goal here is to, when harm happens, how do we create a container to hold that harm, heal that harm, and hold the person accountable where the harm might have been done. Not from a shaming place, not from a blaming place, but from [the idea], “For us to be good as a unit, as a community, you need to be good.”

So those are some of the things that are coming up for me within that. And I think you all brought me to a great place to have this last question. And again, participants, if you have questions, please drop them in the chat. You know, I would love to hear an example from each of you, maybe multiple examples, if you know everything we’re talking about today, what it looks like in real time. Cause I think the big thing that I’ve seen over and over and over again in philanthropy is even trust, trust, relationship. Those are now buzzwords, in ways that so often I’ll be talking with someone if they’re just like, just how do I do this?

And so what are the, you know, what are the small ways? How did you reach someone who was outside of your initial community or how do you interact with grantees? It can be big, it can be small. But something that our participants can really grab onto and take with them. And sit with and have it. And there’s already been some great stories that have been shared. Just wanted to name that too. But I’d love a few more.

Sadaf Cameron: I have a practical thing I could say. I think curiosity, you cannot underestimate curiosity. It’s such a practical way of actually being able to engage and understand and listen. My dear colleague is on this, on this Zoom right now, Ariane Shaffer, and she will always say that certainty is the enemy to relationships, and I think the antidote to that is genuine curiosity. Coming to conversations, coming to the table with real curiosity.

Again, not being an expert. That is the first thing that comes to mind. I could give tons of practical examples, but I think that’s a way in which carrying curiosity in my work has fostered all of those things around trust and imagination and building community. And learning more is actually just genuinely being curious about where a community is, where people are coming from.

Tara Trudell: Sure, I’ll go. Thank you, Sadaf. Yeah. So I just want to say something: I’m not against reports. I just always say that we can rethink how they’re delivered. Like what does that look like? As well as, you know, I’m not against them. There should be different ways that we can show the work that we do in the community.

And I will say this too, you know. I trust Kindle with all my heart. And it has been that way since I’ve been asked to the table. Knowing that Sadaf and her team does all the work that I don’t have to do to protect me and my ways of learning has been instrumental in everything that I’ve learned and continue to learn. It really helps to have a really supportive environment like this.

They helped set that table and they allowed us to contribute to how that table was going to be arranged. And then they just held the space for us. So I don’t know too many other nonprofit organizations, this is the only one I really kind of belong to, if they do it that way, but I have so much trust when I go into the group because of that. I think that’s relationship building and is a really good example of relationship building and listening. Always being able to listen and it’s not just words. It actually is listening to the wind, it is listening to the elements.

And we do that when we come to our group, we do. We pray, but we all do that. We all have our ways of being with energy and spirit. But for us, it was really important that we enter the circle as if it were a sweat, as if it were a ceremony.

And we established that right away, you know, showing up every time with respect and consideration for each person at the table. The women, we just were like plants that needed to be watered. Like that, like morning glory, right? We’re all tangled up now. But it’s beautiful because we’re growing together and I think it’s because of trust and listening.

Beause if that weren’t there, I wouldn’t be here. And I don’t know if Sadaf would be doing the hard work that she has to do, because it is about relationship building even with the donors, even with everybody, I think that’s what Kindle really strives to do and that’s what makes it so beautiful and powerful and life changing, literally life changing.

That is one more thing that equals healing. You know, so we have to have so many components to get to that point.

Hilary Giovale: This is such a good question. I love it. So for us, one of the top things is as often as possible, we share decision-making power. And we are so grateful for Kindle and other intermediaries that we work with for allowing us the space and the capacity to be able to do that. Because that’s huge. We’re not there yet. You know, there’s still a long way to go. So that’s one thing.

Another thing that’s been really important for me is allowing ancestral grief to flow. Because the reason that we’re in this situation has to do with our ancestors. For some of us, our ancestors are the one who started this trajectory. And so for me, I’ve had to do a ton of just crying and grieving the mistakes that they made. So that’s really important.

And then my favorite ones, in addition, are cooking for people. I love to cook for people. And just invite them over and feed them and listen to them. That is like the best tool that I have for building relationships. And that’s one of my favorite ones in my toolbox.

And then the other favorite tool I have in my toolbox is doing humble work. Showing up for the work party. Chopping the wood. Washing the dishes. Getting all the toilet paper and paper towels at Walmart for the gathering or whatever it is, you know.

Humble work that doesn’t require a lot of words or sophistication but just showing up with a good heart. So those are my four recommendations or how to’s.