NDN Fund

NDN Fund is an indigenous-led organization which provides loans and investments to large-scale community and national development projects. The fund is unique in scope and in structure: it seeks to invest in Indigenous communities while building Indigenous political power with the rallying cry: “Defend, Develop, and Decolonize.”

Starting in 2017, NDN Fund began with a vision to indigenize large-scale development, regenerative agriculture, food sovereignty, and equitable economic growth. Its parent organization, NDN Collective, is an advocacy organization for building Indigenous power. Creating the fund was a fundamental part of a strategy for transforming colonial economic practices through the application of Indigenous worldviews, knowledge, and perspectives.

NDN Fund is an emerging community development financial institution (CDFI), of which there are over a thousand across the United States. The community development sector has often played a paternalistic and colonizing role—or no role at all—in Native communities. There is a long and painful history of non-Indigenous populations seizing Native lands and imposing development models (including cooperative business models) on Indigenous communities across North America.

More recently, a dependence on federal funds has led to what former Managing Director Nikki Pieratos, a citizen of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, calls a scarcity mindset. Native Nations end up competing for scarce resources from the bureaucracy of the federal government—which throughout history has opposed and undermined Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. The federal government’s investments often don’t align with the long-term vision of Indigenous communities; non-Native lenders, and the stakeholders they answer to, often fail to understand—and actively disregard—what is actually needed on the ground. When Indigenous communities look beyond government funding to commercial lenders, they encounter a predatory industry with high-interest rates and collateral requirements that exclude those who are not already wealthy. This industry has a history of extracting what little wealth remains in Native communities, which has led to community distrust of most outside lenders and funders.

The Fund provides an alternative route for Indigenous entrepreneurs by turning those extractive and paternalistic practices on their heads: it is run by Indigenous leadership, it gives decision-making power to Indigenous borrowers, and it practices an economics that aligns with Indigenous values.

What does an Indigenous economy look like in practice? The answers differ, of course, by community and context. The Minnesota Indigenous Business Alliance names eight values as being fundamental to building its understanding of an Indigenous economy: wisdom, humility, social responsibility, honesty, respect, equality, reciprocity, and love.

Guided by values like these, NDN Fund’s approach to project-based lending seeks to decolonize conventional financial practices. Firstly, tribal leadership has power over money, and the ability to control its own development—as opposed to the conventional model of top-down nonNative-led development. Secondly, lending is relationship-based, moving at the speed of trust—as opposed to transactional, volume-based operations. Next, NDN Fund practices a mindset of abundance over scarcity and incorporates this into its decisions. Finally, NDN Fund works to make its investments with nature and the wisdom of the land its ultimate guide, centering circular—as opposed to linear or extractive—economic relationships. All of these practices build on an Indigenous history of pre-colonial economics on Turtle Island, before capitalism dominated the continent.

This type of approach to development is rare for a financial institution. At NDN Fund, there is an ongoing practice of decolonizing “traditional” (read: colonized) underwriting and financing standards. According to Pieratos, “When we think of wellbeing, economic development is the cornerstone. But economic development for who? One of the most important and impactful things for Native communities is generational impact. To have a generational impact, we need to shift the way capital is flowing into communities.”

NDN Fund has already financed a number of projects through this decolonized lens: an eel aquaculture business in Maine, a Navajo-owned solar project in the Southwest United States, and a boat building company in Cordova, Alaska to support kelp harvesting. NDN Fund does not always require traditional collateral from the borrower and is creative in terms of what it requires to secure the loan. For instance, it has used equity shares and revenue sharing instead of requiring personal guarantees or asking borrowers to stake their homes or assets.

Another means by which NDN Fund seeks to “shift the way that capital flows” is through its sourcing of investment. Recognizing the restrictions that come with accepting federal dollars, NDN Fund has focused on bringing in flexible capital from private foundations, impact investors, and individuals. This has allowed it freedom in how it lends and who it lends to. With less red tape, it can structure project-based deals more creatively, create terms that work better for communities, and scale up the size of investments in a culturally responsive manner.

Defending Indigenous land rights is key to Indigenous sovereignty and, therefore, to developing strong Native economies through a decolonized approach. So, in addition to its development work, NDN Fund also builds Indigenous political power through supporting the return of Indigenous land with landback loans, such as the loan to Tzicatl Community Development Corporation for the purchase of land in Los Angeles to expand their language revitalization school.

That’s the power of “Defend, Develop, and Decolonize.” The three are interconnected, and one cannot happen without the others. NDN’s efforts in these three areas should be compelling not just for Indigenous peoples, but for everyone; as NDN President and CEO Nick Tilsen argues: “The liberation of Indigenous people is directly connected to the liberation of all people.” For NDN, to fight for Indigenous land sovereignty is to fight for collective liberation through movement building across all communities and generations.