- Speakers
Crystal Echo-HawkGuest
Jade BegayGuest
Crystal Echo-HawkGuestJade BegayGuest
And we were a proudly Native woman-led social and racial justice organization that really, from the outset, we understood that in order to change the story, And changing the story is about how we can build power, build influence and agency.
We had to do it by amplifying contemporary Native voices, stories and issues in order to advance self-determination, justice and equity for our people.
And it was a vision that we knew from the outset that we could never do alone.
And that is going to be the motto, the rhythm to this entire talk with you all today.
And I love that stat that for those 96 billion impressions, that means theoretically somebody would have seen our stuff 12 times.
But I think as you start to look at these numbers, it's understanding that we constantly work to pull multiple levers and that these numbers really reflect our organizing model and our approach.
unique about Illuminative is that I didn't start this work to just go form an organization.
It's just that we knew that something needed to be done because we saw back in the early 2000s and for so long how much our people were invisible, how we were not getting traction on any major issues, even though we constantly won the races that we did not want to win, is that we were always at the lowest rung of every social, economic, health indicator.
But what was unique is that we worked with more than 250 native leaders, youth, you name it, all walks of life from our communities and also some allies to be very clear about what we were fighting for.
But what really struck me is because our invisibility, we could feel how profound it was.
How many times I'd sat in rooms and major foundations that were driven by data to make decisions about where portfolios of money will go, that our people didn't even show up in the data.
And so I really want to shout out the W.K. Kellogg Foundation because they gave us our $2.5 million angel investment.
That, followed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Pechanga Band of Indians, and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux community, all put up that $3.3 million so that we could do the largest public opinion research study ever done about, by, and for Native peoples, with the fundamental questions asking, what is in the American psyche? From diverse peoples to key institutions, Right? To the systems of power.
How does that system, how do people perceive Native people? And how do those perceptions influence the way that we're treated? This was absolutely critical.
And we were a proudly Native woman-led social and racial justice organization that really, from the outset, we understood that in order to change the story, And changing the story is about how we can build power, build influence and agency.
We had to do it by amplifying contemporary Native voices, stories and issues in order to advance self-determination, justice and equity for our people.
And it was a vision that we knew from the outset that we could never do alone.
And that is going to be the motto, the rhythm to this entire talk with you all today.
And I love that stat that for those 96 billion impressions, that means theoretically somebody would have seen our stuff 12 times.
But I think as you start to look at these numbers, it's understanding that we constantly work to pull multiple levers and that these numbers really reflect our organizing model and our approach.
unique about Illuminative is that I didn't start this work to just go form an organization.
It's just that we knew that something needed to be done because we saw back in the early 2000s and for so long how much our people were invisible, how we were not getting traction on any major issues, even though we constantly won the races that we did not want to win, is that we were always at the lowest rung of every social, economic, health indicator.
But what was unique is that we worked with more than 250 native leaders, youth, you name it, all walks of life from our communities and also some allies to be very clear about what we were fighting for.
But what really struck me is because our invisibility, we could feel how profound it was.
How many times I'd sat in rooms and major foundations that were driven by data to make decisions about where portfolios of money will go, that our people didn't even show up in the data.
And so I really want to shout out the W.K. Kellogg Foundation because they gave us our $2.5 million angel investment.
That, followed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Pechanga Band of Indians, and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux community, all put up that $3.3 million so that we could do the largest public opinion research study ever done about, by, and for Native peoples, with the fundamental questions asking, what is in the American psyche? From diverse peoples to key institutions, Right? To the systems of power.
How does that system, how do people perceive Native people? And how do those perceptions influence the way that we're treated? This was absolutely critical.
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