The first philanthropists in the United States were Indigenous people. Values intrinsic to Indigenous cultures — generosity, respect, responsibility, partnership, and reciprocity — are also central to philanthropy. We have a lot to teach the field, yet our role in the philanthropic world is rarely acknowledged. One reason is a lack of high-quality data about the hopes, needs, and overall impact of Indigenous people.
It is said that whoever holds the data tells the story. Indigenous people have been excluded from research, data, and reporting — often reduced to no more than an asterisk. Consequently, our place in the story of philanthropy, both throughout history and today, is nearly invisible.
With all the money that philanthropy invests in data-driven approaches, it’s worth asking why there isn’t richer and more inclusive data on Indigenous people. This lack of data is even more perplexing given the field’s recent focus on issues critical to Black, Indigenous, and people of color , or BIPOC people.
Grant makers have responded to the nation’s racial reckoning of the past few years by hosting diversity, equity, and inclusion training sessions for employees, switching to language that highlights the strengths of a given population rather than its challenges, and acknowledging how racism has influenced the nation’s programs and policies.
What they haven’t done is examine their own data practices and the data projects they fund. Without taking those steps, it’s impossible to understand which distinct and diverse communities under the BIPOC umbrella are being helped — and which are left out.
This is especially crucial for Indigenous populations, who often get lost in the larger BIPOC narrative. Typical research practices lead almost all grant makers — even those with a specific focus on Indigenous people — to miss critical information.
Overestimating Giving
This was true of the Bush Foundation, which has programs aimed directly at Native Americans. When the grant maker decided to look closely at whom was actually served by its grants, it found its coding and reporting process for such funding did not always match reality. For example, if a school checked all the boxes indicating that it served every population group, but had only one or two Native students, it was categorized as an investment in Indian Country. In short, the Bush Foundation’s own numbers on funds benefiting Native people were inflated. When the foundation discovered this, it took steps to change its practices to better reflect the reality of whom its funds were helping.
The problem is even more acute in the larger philanthropic world. In 2019, an analysis of funding data by Candid found that only 0.4 percent of all philanthropic funding by large U.S. foundations went to nonprofits that serve Indigenous people. And in 2018, research by the First Nations Development Institute showed that just 0.23 percent of philanthropic funds were directed at Native American-led nonprofit organizations.
It’s likely those numbers are even lower because the underlying data does not adequately track funding to tribal organizations and communities. When Indigenous communities do receive funding, it typically comes with burdensome reporting requirements that contribute to a cycle of underfunding.
Data on Indigenous people isn’t missing from only the philanthropic field. General demographic, health, economic, and other kinds of data are woefully inaccurate. Even worse, they tell the wrong story about who Indigenous people are.
Promising Work Underway
Fortunately, several efforts are underway that aim to change that story. A burgeoning Indigenous-led data movement is making headway but needs the larger philanthropic world to pay attention.
The movement includes groups such as the Urban Indian Health Institute, whose project “Data Genocide of American Indians and Alaska Natives in COVID-19 Data” grades each state’s quality of coronavirus racial data and their effectiveness in collecting and reporting information about American Indian and Alaska Native populations. Overall, the United States received a D+ rating, with 14 states not even including a category for those Indigenous populations on their Covid-19 dashboards. The report provides critical insights into the shortcomings of public-health research and presents recommendations on how to collect and report on race and ethnicity more accurately, including by not grouping populations into homogenizing categories such as “other” or “multiracial.”
Similarly, the Indigenous Futures Survey spotlights the experiences, systemic challenges, and priorities of Indigenous people today. The project, a collaboration of IllumiNative, the Native Organizers Alliance, and the Research for Indigenous Social Action and Equity Center at the University of Michigan, involved the participation of more than 6,400 Indigenous people, representing 401 tribes and all 50 states. The survey results have been used to inform Congress about the effects of Covid-19 on Indigenous people and on a broad set of issues including civic engagement, identity, and culture.
Projects such as these are especially powerful because they are led by people who are the focus of the research. The meaning and value of data and research findings are influenced by who interprets them. Non-Indigenous researchers often don’t ask the right questions or understand nuanced issues that arise during the research process involving culture, tribal citizenship, sovereignty, and more.
A recent report by Change Philanthropy found that just 3.8 percent of philanthropy professionals identify either solely as Indigenous or as Indigenous in combination with some other racial or ethnic identity. The majority of those, 61 percent, work at community foundations. This minimal representation was one of the primary reasons the organizations we lead — Native Americans in Philanthropy and Native Ways Federation — were founded. We work to educate grant makers about our communities and where investments are needed most.
But we are only scratching the surface. If philanthropy is truly committed to supporting all BIPOC people, a good place to start is through sharply increased investments in Indigenous-led data projects. Help us correct the story about our people and what they need to thrive.
