 Hi, everybody. Everybody doing okay? Yeah, feel good? So far, great day. CEC Arts Link. Maybe we should just quickly say who we are and what organization we're from and maybe what place we're from, too. So I'll start. I'm Barbara Lanseers and I am the Executive Director of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, which is based in New York City, but I make my home in the Hudson Valley, New York, which is a very pretty place. Hi, I'm Angelique Power. I am the President and CEO of the Skillman Foundation. We're based in Detroit. I'm from the south side of Chicago. I'm from Hyde Park. Sorry, I'm not a mic person. I'm Petty Washday. I'm from Macassie, Tommany, Omaniwee. I'm from Machiappi. I'm from Washi Chuye. I'm Oglala Lakota and was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation. I am here representing an organization I've been with. I time it by when my daughter was born. She's 24 now. So I've been there for 24 years. So I'm honored to be here. The organization's called First Peoples Fund and we're based in Heisapa, the beautiful Black Hills in southwestern South Dakota of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where I grew up. La maya. Thank you. We have never met in person before. This is what brought us together. And we had a couple different planning calls, which it seems like everybody did their due diligence in planning. But that was such a joyous experience for me, learning about you all and your work, and seeing how my work was sort of intertwined. So thank you CEC for bringing us together in this thoughtful way. But there were a series of questions. I'm just gonna blanket us a little bit with questions. The questions that came up during our preparatory conversations, which were centered around philanthropy, we each have our own individual philanthropic practices. And I think we could easily say that they're not, our practices are not necessarily mirroring the wider philanthropic practices that exist, particularly in the United States. So during our conversations there were all these questions that came up that we deal with, the three of us on a daily basis. So I'm just gonna float them out into the atmosphere for all of us. So how do we describe our personal perspectives and our own individual practices? What are we each doing differently that goes against the grain of what's commonly thought as business as usual in philanthropy? How are we disrupting power structures and undoing harm from the inside as opposed to pushing from the outside? How are we deprogramming what has been programmed? And how do we shift the field towards more holistic thinking? So these are the kinds of the big questions that we are grappling with. And I thought it was fun because I'm a theater person by training and also a writer, so I love a metaphor. And during our conversations we were describing ourselves and our practices in these metaphoric ways. You were saying that you're a farmer, gardener. I'm actually, I see myself, I aim toward being a tree. And that's my work though, but I feel like in my work I'm a gardener. Yes. Okay, okay. And Lori, you were telling me that you feel like a weaver and a connector. And I feel like a baker. And so I thought maybe we could just sort of dive into these metaphors, tree and gardener. Can we start with you with the tree and the gardener metaphor? Well, the tree is more recent. When I moved to Detroit, I got a coach and she was like, who's a famous person that you can channel when things get rough? Like who's someone you really admire? And I was like, well, I'd like to channel a tree. That's famous. That's pretty famous, right? But I do feel like that's ultimately the being that I admire the most, very rooted. There's like a network. Trees are very connected to each other. They're constantly in mutual aid. They're sending communication. They're taking care of each other. And then they're like stretching toward the heavens. But philanthropy to me is, you know, I ran a different foundation here called the Field Foundation. And that was a complete experiment in if racial equity in philanthropy is an oxymoron or not. And I never solved that riddle, but I do think that bringing in a lot of different people to try to rethink what we're doing is really important. And then I left for a variety of reasons and moved to a new city that's completely different and Field Foundation is a beautiful, incredible place. But it became really important to me in realizing when you move, it's really important to not take the work with you, right, like that there's so many people that are incredibly thoughtful people working in philanthropy and then they burn out, they bump their heads against things and then they leave and all of the people who were supported by their work stop being funded and all those types of things. So the gardener is really the idea that my job is really the soil to create very fertile, nourished. I'm sorry, I have to drink some water. All of a sudden it's, if you get up here and it's like a wall of dryness, I don't know. I was like feeling it build to, I was like, I know I need water, I know I need. But that's really what my job is and it's the people that I work with and the people around me, but you know, we focus a lot on systems on the irrigation system, if you will, let's keep going with the metaphor. I love it, I'm into it. But ultimately that's what I am. I'm a gardener, I'm a cultivator of people and ideas and my main goal is that it's not about me and that when I leave, like the whole soil is so nourished that the work can continue. It's beautiful. Lori, can we talk about your Weaver Connector self? Yeah, I think the Weaver Connector comes from just, I always say that the work at First Peoples Fund didn't start when I started there, when my daughter was one or conceived. Is it started much more before that? And so the work in Indian country and the work that I've done is a continuation from previous folks, from when I started out in this work when I was my daughter's age at 24. And so I feel like the Weavers and the Connectors are all those indigenous women from around the world, from Chiapas to Blackfeet Nation, a long time wonderful woman, Eloise Cabal, who took on the whole entire United States government and the largest lawsuit in this country, who I had the wonderful privilege of working with and it was just the mismanagement of the tribal trust or the trust funds held in trust by the federal government. So the work at First Peoples Fund really stems from those relationships. And then I think about just values and how we're raised in community and probably every one of us in this room has the aunties or the uncles or someone who's making something with their hands at the kitchen table, right? I see her over here. She's working away, because that's how she thinks and I see artists, they have to be doing something with their hands as they're talking to you or they're so disconnected from the conversation because I saw a Chanupa yawn over there. I was like, oh yeah, because we're gonna talk about philanthropy. I can honestly, philanthropy was, but... We're usually the downers in the room, you know? We're usually, ugh. Yeah, so I just wanna say it really comes from those relationships and connections and then just growing up on the res in South Dakota, just thinking about in any community those cultural protocols when you enter somebody else's home or place and how your aunties and then expect your grandmothers to be, as we say, a good relative. We all say that, that's not First Peoples Fund. We all know that when our auntie walks in the room we have to sit up straight and, you know, or we're gonna get asked to do something. But on the other hand, I was also the other one in the family where the roles between men and women sometime, like I want it to be outside with my grandpa at the ranch. Chanupa and I both grew up in Indian Coway families too, but I always want it to be outside and not in the house, right, doing all the other stuff. So I think about that in just the strength of indigenous folks and all of you folks in the room that have shared their stories. I'm so moved by all of the artists. I'm a culture practitioner, I'm a weaver, but I'm not doing these brilliant creative work that all of you are doing in the name of social justice and just the impacts on your communities, you know? And hearing the young woman from Ukraine were absorbed in trauma and my wrists, because we have to unravel 120 some years of disruption. So to hear your story just come in and say, I don't wanna live in that trauma, you know? But then knowing that you have to sit in it deep, you have to really sit in it deep to get through it, but people come in and wanna change and say, oh, let's do this now and you have no say in that. So I think the artists are, and we don't even call ourselves artists in our communities, you know, our folks don't really see ourselves as artists. You know, they see themselves as makers of something or creators of something, so I'll stop there. I like the tree, because you took me right home because I was thinking about for Sundance ceremony how when we take down the tree, we go into ceremony and we hear the stories of how the trees spoke to each other and the one being sacrificed to come into ceremony and then how you have to, it can't, you have to move it, you know, without touching ground till it gets to its place where it's gonna be raised and be there for a year and it gives itself to the people, so thank you for sharing that. It's so nice to hang out with you again, Laurie. Hey. It's so good to see you. I like the tree too. I like the tree too. She shook up a foundation that I set on. She was, came in and said what she had to say and we worked together, so it was all good. Do you remember that? Yes, oh yeah, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, my metaphor is baker, which is hilarious because please don't put me in a kitchen. I'm terrible. I'm not a very good cook. I'm not a very good baker, but philanthropically, the foundation that I work for is a foundation that's rooted in exchange. So exchanges across geographic boundaries and borders and cultural exchange, exchange in the arts, protecting of the land, how do we meet each other? And so if I think about people as ingredients and you think about creating the right space, safe space for people to come together and bring their whole self, and then you have this exchange that happens and it's like baking something, right? There's like you have eggs and flour and milk and sugar and with enough heat under the right conditions that those ingredients become something new and transform one another. And so we had one of our founding trustees, this amazing woman, Elizabeth McCormack, who passed away at the age of 99 and 2021 was one of my mentors. And I asked her one time, Elizabeth, how do you express, what's the ethos of the trust for mutual understanding? And she said, oh, it's simple. It's we meet and we change each other. And so that's what I think about as the baker. Like these ingredients come together, you work together under the right conditions and then you come out of the exchange completely transformed. So I like our metaphors. Lori, you mentioned something just now and also in our preparatory call where you were talking about being a good relative and how that's not only part of your philanthropic practice, that's part of who you are and what your people believe. So will you talk a little bit more about that? I think in Chanupa talked about a little bit about it, you know, in the morning, this morning, you know, just really about the protocols in community and when you enter a community and family and you know, just really, which is really a lot of first people's funds, you know, values around humility and respect and honor. So one of our really signature awards we have is the Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award. And we honor, you know, culture bears are tradition keepers, knowledge keepers who selflessly give of themself in community. And they're usually the really quiet ones that are working really hard, you know? So when I see even language like disruptor or reparations, you know, I just think about like Dolores Churchill in Alaska and Lonnie Hatch in Alaska and they're just living off the land and gathering the materials they need to survive, right? And but if I told Dolores you're a disruptor, she would just, I could just see her just laugh. She's like 94 years old now and I just love her dearly. But you know, just these language that get imposed up, someone said reparations earlier. I'm like, I had to look that one up in a dictionary originally just to see where it came from in this thing we call philanthropy. So I think, you know, for me, it's just in our communities that you have to be in there for the long haul, right? You know that generationally the work you're gonna do is not gonna be seen until, you know, the trees aren't gonna start growing until we're long gone, right? And that's why I say the work is a continuation of everybody's contributions to First People's Fund. And it did start with one philanthropist, you know, like yours, her name was Jennifer Easton and she lived in Mohawk territory and, you know, would see the Weavers out gathering their materials for ceremonies and then she would also see what was happening, you know, to the land, you know, in terms of I think they had a super, super fun side up on Mohawk at the time that sister friend, Gadji Cook, was fighting against the contamination that was on that reservation. So, you know, she was hearing all these things and she decided, you know, as a young woman, her father was in the rubber business and then apparently rubber made eventually bought their share of it. So they became part of, you know, this world we know nothing about, right? Their shares in rubber made. But she gave all, she chose to give all her wealth away to Indian country and First People's Fund was one of those. Asumasil Foundation was another that just supported women who needed whatever, if they needed tools or if they needed to go to college or if they needed to get a car. And then she also supported Buffalo Restoration and then the Sundance Institute's native program. And people would ask her, why do you give to that, you know, to the Indian people or whatever? And she's like, well, because if I take my money away, who's gonna replace it? And that's really how it was at the time. You know, we didn't have a lot of resources coming to Indian country in this thing we call philanthropy. And that's really changing today with, you know, other funds out there like Indian Collective, you know, and Indian Foundation and, you know, they're just going right in there and saying, give us your shit, you know. This is our money. Anyways, came from our land, you know. So like that. So, and that's not me, but I can do that easily. But I don't do that today, because I'm grandma now. No, no problem, no problem. But go ahead, that was, I'll stop there. That's great, that's great. Thank you, thank you. And then Angelique, I know when we were talking, we were talking about our own philanthropic practices. You said something that I was struck by where you were talking about the process is the outcome, which seems very much in my idea in line with the tree metaphor too. So we talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, a lot of what I was thinking about was actually entering a new place and moving to Detroit, which is very different than Chicago. And the way that I wanted to enter in was by listening for a long period of time. And so I spent a year sitting with different people and just asking like some basic questions, like what do I need to understand about Detroit? What do I need to understand about philanthropy, about skillmen, and then like how are you doing right now? Cause this was 21 and we were in the midst of COVID and just the world. And like what do you as a human need right now? And through that, all of these conversations, I learned so much about the city. I heard people talk today about sitting in the non-binary, sitting in the discomfort for a while, not solving, not compartmentalizing, not jumping to a conclusion, which is actually really hard for me to not do. Like I can listen for a while and I'm like, I get it, I get it, okay, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. You're a doer. I'm a doer and I'm a builder. And so I knew that I was giving myself a very hard assignment. But what it revealed is like there are multiple truths that operate at the same time of a place and they're all valid. And so my assignment isn't to solve at all actually. And so through the conversations, we transitioned into this other phase of collectively designing what this grant making is going to look like. But I often get asked like, so what's the impact on what are the metrics and how do you measure? And that is what I think, like it's actually just about a recipe. It really is just about people coming together to co-design solutions. And if we believe that we need each other and that together we're going to create this future that we wanna live in, then we live in that future already. Yeah, so. Yeah, that's beautifully said, beautifully said. I wanna do time check because but I see, there you are Max. I was like, where did you go? Oh good, okay, we're so good. Good job, these preparatory calls were excellent. So I want to move to a question that I sent you all ahead of time. But what are each of our thoughts around how we have created different ways to form relationships between funders and grantees? There's obviously a hierarchy. There's obviously a power structure. It's very difficult to get away from that when money is involved. But how do you feel like in your philanthropic practice you are trying to do that differently and forge relationships differently? I'll start with you, Angelique. I was like, Lori, you get to answer. Or we can start with Lori. Well, I actually want to reference Lori. So Lori sits on the board of a different foundation and she was referencing where I came in as a consultant. And so I remember a conversation we had and I was asking you a similar question. Like what is the power? How do you disrupt a power dynamic? And you said, there is no word for power in my language. It's energy. Yeah. And that just like blue, it still blows me away. And so I think about that, like how do you shift energy? I'm also like a pretty self-deprecating person. I do not, I feel like Edith Ann, that's a very old reference, but that's like Lily Tomlin sitting in like a big oversized chair. I feel like I always like show up very differently in different spaces. I just, I feel like people are, really you're the president of a foundation? Like they made that choice. That's an interesting choice, you know? So I try very hard to not like believe my own hype or believe the hype of money. And also know that like my job is not as an expert, but as just like to move capital around. And then I also don't forget that I am a dollar sign. Yeah, yeah. Like I think that's really important to recognize and there's tremendous amount of need. And so I think that a part of it is also like know how you're seen, know who you are, know the difference between the being, your assignment and like what you're meant to do in this moment. Yeah, thank you. I just wanna lift you up for a moment too, because like it's rare to have a black woman of color, you know, leading a foundation, right? So it's rare for us to be able to have those kinds kind of conversations, because most of our colleagues, you know, within philanthropy are all at the program officer kind of level. So they do the really hard, hard work to advocate for all of us, right? And you know, a group of us started the Intercultural Leadership Institute. And it was us always sitting on the outside, you know, around the circle in these things we call cohorts and not being able to really relate to some big institution in Washington, DC's model of marketing strategies or whatever. And so we decided to start the Intercultural Leadership Institute based on that. And so we've rode the surfboard and the waves and the bronc ride on the horse and all of that just, you know, in terms of getting more resources to our community. But we're always often come to and approached after the fact when they mess something up or whatever. And then, you know, so it really kind of, excuse my language pisses us off, right? So, but what we do now is we, you know, I think the one thing I would say about philanthropy is be ready to just walk away. Cause you just can't, you know, I feel you just have to jump through so many hoops all the time. So this collective of us, you know, we've walked away from, you know, during COVID, like five million, or just like, done, this is exhausting. We work all day, we work for our communities. And then we're sitting here until midnight trying to create something cause we did something wrong, you know? And so, and then there's another one kind of in the hopper now that, you know, is a real struggle for all of us. And it's a huge amount of resources. And at that same point, we all decided, you know, this is not worth it, you know? So then we're back at the table, you know? But we kind of take the, you know, the negotiation and say, this is how we're going to do it, right? So just share that. That's great. That's a really important learnings. Yeah. And so we have a minute. So I'm just going to wrap up a little bit. I just want to say, you know, in talking about relationship funder grantee relationship, I'm really honored to be here because CEC Arts Link is one of the longest standing grantees of the trust for mutual understanding. We've been working. Yay! We've been working with CEC since 1992. So that precedes, predates my time at TMU. I've been there for 16 years now. And that predates Simon's time at TMU. But I've been able to see from where I sit, the organization go through many iterations. And this is a really exciting time, I think, for the organization. And we, I think, have, I hope, from my perspective, a relationship of deep listening, a relationship of very frequent communication, and respect for each other. Even though there's a power dynamic and there's a wallet and all those things, I feel like we really try to bring our humanity to the table every time we meet. And I personally benefit so much from this relationship. So I think it's amazing to be here with you all and to have met you all, not through funder convenings and not through anything related to foundation work or philanthropy or, as you say, the thing we call philanthropy. I would like to use that if that's okay. But to have met you two, who I feel so inspired by and grateful to know now and feel in network and community with through this grantee that's, I think, such a special, wonderful organization. So this has been wonderful. The talk and the preparation. So thank you both. Amaya. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.