Repairing Our Social Fabric Archives

Stories of Native community-building can help us redress historic inequities, create more just societies, and cultivate a better world. But far too often, Indigenous narratives are made “invisible” — intentionally and politically co-opted and obscured in an attempt to rewrite history from a colonial perspective.

On December 6, NationSwell and Marguerite Casey Foundation were proud to present “Invisible No More: Voices from Native America,” a book club event celebrating and centering Native American luminaries who are leading in the areas of Indigenous economics, environmental justice, and community-building.

Michael Roberts, Trisha Kehaulani Watson, and Heather Fleming — a few of the essayists who contributed their words and stories to Invisible No More — were joined by Dr. Carmen Rojas, President + CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation, for a panel on the ongoing impact of genocide and settler colonialism; the racialized upward consolidation of wealth in philanthropy and beyond; and what we can do, both through our institutions and as individuals, to help support Native communities.

Here are some of the key learnings from the event:

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Learnings and Insights

The “invisibility” of native communities is intentional. Any solutions-oriented approach must necessarily acknowledge that many Americans don’t think about Native communities at all, and that that invisibility — and other pernicious narratives about Indigenous populations — is by design; it works to further political interests. Recognizing and naming the violence that has been historically perpetrated against Native Americans contradicts the idea of American exceptionalism in a way that many politicians, private sector leaders, and civilians have a hard time accommodating.
Social movements involving climate justice must evolve to include Indigenous voices. Having long been the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to raising awareness about the environmental issues that have put us on a path to destruction, Indigenous voices should now be centered in any movement to curb the effects of climate change. Building connections and coalitions with the underfunded grassroots organizations already doing this work on the ground will be an integral step to facilitating change and steering us towards a more environmentally-just future.
Silicon Valley’s startup mentality and metrics for success are often diametrically opposed to Native values. While America’s tech class is primarily concerned with definitions of wealth that are defined by finance and scalability, Navajo philosophy dictates that wealth is more closely related to the ideas of balance and harmony. The idea of success will look different depending on who’s defining it, and discussing those differences explicitly will help to drive alignment.
Learn the history of the land you’re standing on. Acknowledging racialized violence and painful colonial histories requires discomfort, but that sacrifice will be required if we are to truly grapple with and understand the challenges Indigenous communities are facing. Asking difficult questions about simple things — like where the water every day comes from or the indigenous name of a place — can be an accessible way to honor native communities and truly begin to grapple with America’s painful history.
Buy Native goods and services. Investing in Native artisans, creators, and entrepreneurs provides vital cash flow into tribal economies, and also helps to preserve Native culture and history. You can check out shops like Eighth Generation and creators like Daniel John, Marissa Mike for examples of where to buy.
Building coalitions will be an invaluable part of building a brighter future. Through linking arms with other marginalized groups, Indigenous advocacy orgs. are beginning to see momentum through government initiatives like Justice40, which aims to cascade investments towards disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution. Strength in numbers helps to create visibility — and with American Indians and Alaska Natives making up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, that visibility can make a world of difference.
Write a dang check. There are so many incredible Native organizations doing amazing work on the ground — but Native populations represent such a small percentage of the U.S. population that good allies will be required in order to effect real change. One of the simplest ways to support Native Americans in having the autonomy to solve the problems facing their community is by donating money — the list of grantees listed on First Nations’ website is a great place to start.
BIPOC cohorts — although a necessary component of the journey toward indigenous justice — still often fall short in many ways. While it is important not to become mired in games of “who’s more marginalized,” it is still prudent to acknowledge the fundamental differences faced by those of Indigenous heritage when compared to other marginalized groups. Rather than being recognized as a purely racial identity, indigenous heritage is also a political relationship with the U.S. government that has historically meant a lack of funding for roads and infrastructure; contentious legislation; a lack of funding for businesses; and much more.

To advance its vision for a society that prioritizes the needs of excluded and underrepresented people, Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) has partnered with NationSwell on the MCF Book Club: Reading for a Liberated Future, a quarterly event series promoting authors from historically marginalized populations whose work centers radical, regenerative, and transformative approaches to community-building.

Throughout 2024, Dr. Carmen Rojas (President & CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation) will interview a series of authors in front of the organizations’ shared audience of field-builders, thought leaders, impact investors, philanthropic grantmakers, elected officials, and heads of social impact and sustainability at some of the nation’s largest private sector companies.

Proponents of a pluralistic America often use the metaphor of a “melting pot” to talk about how diversity strengthens our nation. But what if we go beyond the melting pot and think of America at its inclusive best as… more of a potluck dinner?

Potlucks are civic spaces that both embody and celebrate pluralism. They rely on the contributions of a diverse community. If people don’t bring an offering, the potluck doesn’t exist. If everyone brings the same thing, the potluck is boring. They respect diverse identities by enthusiastically welcoming the gifts of the people who gather. They facilitate relationships between people by creating a space for eating and socializing and surprise connections. And they cultivate in people the importance of not just the individual parts and the connections between them, but the health of the whole as well.

At an October NationSwell Mainstage, some of the nation’s most acclaimed social impact leaders gathered in New York City for an in-person, fireside discussion of what it takes to bring this vision of America from theory to practice. Anchored by NationSwell Council leader Eboo Patel and ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt, rooted in Eboo’s new book, “We Need to Build.” Together, NationSwell’s gathered guests explored the actionable, tangible steps leaders can take to move us from melting pot to potluck, learning how leaders can build and support diverse institutions for equitable social change.

3 Key Numbers

A 76% majority of Americans says diversity is good for America.

A 47% plurality says diversity makes it harder to solve challenges.

An 82% majority says our nation is divided in key ways.

3 Key Trends

An overall satisfaction: According to research from Pew, an overwhelming majority of Americans are satisfied with the racial mix of their local communities, and would prefer if they continued to be “about as racially mixed” as they currently are — even when their communities rank as some of the least diverse in the country.

From the melting pot to the battlefield: In 1908, the “melting pot” model for diverse society, which asked immigrants to effectively dissolve their distinctiveness into the dominant culture, could be considered a big step forward. But Patel says we’ve moved past the melting pot, and we now find ourselves in the full swing of what he calls the “battlefield” approach to acknowledging the way diverse cultures exist side-by-side — and while it does ultimately acknowledge a heterogeneous national stage, it ultimately pushes us to think about pluralism through the lens of an endless conflict between dominant and oppressed cultures and people.

Our deepest divides are growing: Studies show that Americans feels more divided now than we felt 40 years ago; and as Greenblatt pointed out, there isn’t just one thing that we feel separates us from our neighbor. The way we identify through our religion, politics, immigration status, race and ethnicity, class, age, and geography play critical roles in the pervasive feeling of fracturing.

What’s Working

Embrace the potluck vision for celebrating and centering American diversity. The potluck society celebrates what Patel calls “the delicious and multitudinous ways that we’re choosing to host a feast of gratitude.” When you tell people to come, you don’t tell them all the reasons you assume they probably can’t bring a dish. For those willing to play a key role in co-architecting the pluralistic society that reflects us at our most aspirational, the potluck dinner provides us a beautiful metaphor that begins with the profound belief that people are all contributors: that they all have a delicious dish to bring to the table.

Acknowledge the ways that we already build bridges across political lines every day. “The only way to have a diverse democracy is to have a difference of opinion, to be able to disagree on some things and work together and work together on others,” Patel said. But the good news is: We already engage with people who think and vote differently from how we do, and we already work in deeply important ways with people with whom we deeply disagree. “Heart surgeons don’t ask each other how they voted,” he noted. “In a diverse democracy, people can disagree and still work together.” As an exercise, he invited guests to think about ten things we did today in which we’re unsure of the politics of the person who did them for you, or with whom you did them.

The Challenges That Remain

Acknowledge the very real roadblocks to unity. As one guest pointed out, there are groups of people in the country who might be more opposed to joining in on a vision for America that celebrates diversity, and whom she warned “might be bringing guns to the potluck.” Patel acknowledged the reality of those fears, but centered the conversation on the productive power of coming into each conversation with an open mind, an open heart, and the belief that all people are capable of making a positive impact on this shared vision if you invite them to do so.

What To Do

Our successes are temporary if we don’t ask ourselves one radical question. Eboo notes that, within the last two weeks, we likely had an experience where we were cheering for or helping somebody with whom, relatively recently in our ethnic heritage, there has been a blood conflict. He notes that these moments represent massive achievements, but the cautions that we should recognize that these moments could be fleeting if we don’t actively work towards creating more of them. “What does it look like to ask, in a society of 33 million people, what’s going right, and how do we do more of what’s going right?” Eboo asked. “If we can achieve that in our civic life, cooperation around certain identities, can we use that as a paradigm by which we spread that ethos elsewhere?”

The power of understating your case. Patel advises those pushing to change our institutions for the better to remember that causing dislocation and suffering is not our intention. In fact, one of the best metrics of success in our project of creating a healthier democracy will be our ability to create more of the functioning institutions that we want to see more of. “If the goal is generating dissatisfaction, we get an A+,” Patel said. “But can you build alternatives that are better? Defeat the things you do not love by building the things you do. If society is largely made up by its governing structures and institutions — like schools, hospitals, YMCAs, companies, and networks of housing — then we need to build better institutions.”

NationSwell is an award-winning social impact company that assists changemakers, thought leaders and purpose-driven business executives as they drive social impact at scale. Through a robust membership community and the nation’s leading social impact studio, NationSwell supports these impact leaders on a range of our world’s most pressing issues. Learn more here.