 All right, we'll go ahead and get going here. Thank you guys all for joining us today. I want to say thank you to SOCAP for putting on this amazing event. This is our second year being here, and we're happy to be part of the programming. See what kind of value we can add to this amazing conference. I'd also like to thank, you know, this session was proposed for a popular vote. And so if any of you guys helped us get the stage today and make this session happen, we wanted to thank you too. And then lastly, thank you all for coming. Welcome to the Social Investment Opportunities with Indigenous Communities panel. My name is Michael Johnson. I'm a citizen of the three affiliated tribes of North Dakota, and I'm the Assistant Director of Development with the Native American Rights Fund. I've been doing fundraising, marketing, and development for national native nonprofits for about a decade now. I'm really excited to present this panel, and I'll do some introductions here in a moment. But we're just really excited to bring this amazing group of native experts to you guys to discuss different areas and opportunities found in Indian Country. Each speaker will have about 10 minutes to talk about how they see social investment opportunities, and then we'll save about 10 or 15 minutes to the end for questions. A little bit of housekeeping, and I do want to apologize. Chairman Dave Archambault Jr. and Andrew Rodriguez were not able to attend today, so I apologize about that. But believe me, we have amazing content experts here, and everything's going to be great. With that, a little bit of a session overview. We hope to provide an overview of Indian Country, including opportunities, insight into successful tribal relationships. Some of these will bring some examples of collaborations and ideas for future opportunities, and just kind of see where the conversation takes us. So without further ado, I want to introduce our panel. We have Mr. Donald Rigona, a citizen of the Matinacoc Nation of New York, he's also a relative of the Ogallala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. He's the Director of Development and House Counsel for the Native American Rights Fund, and has been with that organization for 23 years. In the past, Don has worked as Outside Counsel for the Ogallala Sioux Tribe, and Special Counsel for the Shinnecock Nation. Next, we have Carla Fredericks, who is also a citizen of the three affiliated tribes of North Dakota. She's the Director of the American Indian Law Clinic at the University of Colorado Law School, and Director of the First Peoples Investment Engagement Program, a program with the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business. Next, we have Ms. Lacey Horn, she's a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She's been the Treasurer of Cherokee Nation since 2011, and she oversees all financial functions for the tribal government, and the tribe's $1 billion annual budget, which includes the Cherokee Nation's Tribal Health Care System, which is the largest of its kind. Lastly, but certainly not least, we have Crystal Cornelius, a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, the Executive Director of First Nations Awista Corporation, which was incorporated in 1999, and is the sole intermediary lender for Native CDFIs in the nation. Awista's mission is to provide opportunities for Native people and communities to develop assets and create wealth by assisting in the establishment of sustainable permanent institutions and programs. So I just wanted to provide a little context and overview for the rest of the conversation. First and foremost, we just wanted to make sure you knew that Indian country is far from monolithic. The diversity and nuance of our nations is large, and we celebrate our differences with respect and honor, while coalescing around the issues that affect all tribes and native peoples. With more than 5.2 people in the country identifying as Native American, 573 federally recognized tribes, over 400 state recognized tribes, and a total land holding of more than 55 million acres. Tribes manage large land bases and large populations, and just for reference, California is about 100 million acres, Utah is less than 55 million acres in size. In the past century, native communities have been sidelined for most major capital projects and outside support for infrastructure. The reasons are many. They include the pervasive relationship with the federal government and control of our communities, systemic racism, the complexity of trust lands, and the isolation many rural native communities face, the myths of gaming, and we could spend an hour just talking about some of those barriers, so we'll move past that. And while we've seen growth of development and opportunities and bringing new ideas and partners to Indian country, much still needs to be done to address the socioeconomic status of our communities. Today, we'll explore some of the new ways that partnerships can go about winding up and having navigate and help navigate the sometimes confusing world of relationships, history, and opportunity in Indian country. So with that said, I'm gonna turn it over to Don, our first panelist. And Don, can you please speak about Native American Rights Fund, your work with Ogallala Sioux Tribe in Shinnecock about the history and landscape of investments in Native communities? And what do you see as the best approach to relationship building going forward? Thank you, Michael. And again, I wanna express my thank you to the SOCAP committee, and to those of you who voted to have this panel today, we truly appreciate that. The Native American Rights Fund is the oldest Native non-profit law firm in the United States. We take on issues for tribes, for Native organizations, and individuals of major importance. We work with a number of tribes on some key issues like the protection of Native natural resources, the accountability of governments to tribes, and that's both state and federal. We also look at the preservation of tribal existence, and we also produce and work on for and fight for the protection of Native human rights. Those are pretty broad contexts, but within that, we look at helping tribes either get recognized or restored from either they were somehow left out of the federal recognition process when this country was formed, or they were terminated during that horrific termination era in the 1940s and the 1950s, but we also work on a lot of other things like fighting the Keystone XL pipeline that's going through our homelands in South Dakota, in North Dakota, and Nebraska, and points south. We've worked with the Standing Rock Sioux people to fight the DAPL pipeline that was going through there. We've worked on a number of cases, including climate change, the protection of natural resources in Alaska, and most recently voting rights in North Dakota, protecting Native peoples' right to vote as American citizens. I can go on and on and talk about North, but that's some of the high points and some of the mainline cases that we've been working on recently. Michael had told you that I used to work be the general counsel for, one of the general counsels for the Oglala Sioux tribe and then also a special counsel for the Shinnecock Nation. And through all my years at both tribes, I've seen a number of businesses, individuals coming through, basically trying to get the tribes to partner with them on some type of business plan or business venture. And a lot of times, those individuals didn't make the grade and they didn't do business with the tribe. And I'll get into some reasons why in a little bit. I think it's important to know and actually one of the biggest reasons why that happened is a lot of people come in and they don't do the research. They don't understand that there are, as Michael had said earlier, 573 federally recognized tribes in the country. These tribes are unique in that they are sovereign nations. They have a unique special relationship with the federal government. They have the same, they're on the same status as states in the United States. So they're just not clubs that these people can go to. They have their own forms of government. They don't have their own judiciary systems. They have their own bodies of law. And I think most importantly, what people have to remember is we're not a homogeneous people, right? Even amongst tribes that are related, like the Oglala Siqiangua Lakota tribe, tribes like that, the Shinnecocks, the Matinnecocks, the Montauks, we still are unique unto ourselves, even though we may be of the same family groups, we all have our unique differences. And those need to be understood and they need to be respected. As well. Most importantly, with that again, we are political entities. We're not racial entities. And that allows us to move forward with establishing our own laws and doing our own economic development projects. That all being said, I think to really ensure a positive result when folks wanna come in and they wanna do business with tribes and on the reservations, they need to be ready to basically work with the tribes as real partners. The tribes being on sovereign nation and being on sovereign land in a lot of cases have a lot of unique things to offer for business partnerships. But when individuals go there, they have to realize a couple of things. They're gonna play by a different set of rules. They need to understand and need to accept and respect the fact that approval for businesses, you can't just go on and just set up a business. You have to, many times, and again, this is gonna vary from tribe to tribe, you have to go on and you have to be able to present ideas to tribal council. Council has to approve it. Sometimes the total tribal membership would have to approve it. And then getting by some of those hurdles, you also get to, in many cases, you're gonna be asked to, when you sign your contracts and agreements, you're gonna be asked to agree that the tribes laws are gonna be governing this contract and should there be a dispute, dispute will be handled if the tribe has its own court system within that tribe's court system. Again, think about it as if you're doing business with another country, whether it's Japan, whether it's England, whether it's Canada. You have to abide by their rules. And if you can go in to these tribes, to these nations, with that respect and go in with realizing that you're in a different country, you're in a sovereign nation, your chances of success are gonna be heightened. Some of you are asking, it's like, well, why? Why can't we just go into business? Well, part of your research prior to coming into Indian country, I think it would behoove you to kind of look at how Native nations have been dealt and treated with over the years, whether it's been by the United States or state governments, or whether it's been by individuals or businesses coming in and running roughshod over tribes. There's many examples of industries coming in and essentially extracting and leaving and often leaving kind of turmoil in their wake. So I think some of that is kind of good to acknowledge and good to know before you go in there. Just as if you're gonna do business in any other country, do your research, understand the folks who you're gonna be treating with, understand how the governments and political systems are set up. You know, that all being said, I think what's important to probably note here is that organizations that have come in over the years who have had the foresight to invest in Indian country early on, okay? They've achieved a tremendous amount of financial success along with their tribal partners in most cases. A perfect example of that is, I don't know if any of you have heard about the Mashantucket Pequots in Connecticut. They were the first really large-scale tribal casino that was, after they became recognized, that was going to be built and set up as a true casino resort. Well, back in the early 90s, that tribe could not get any of the banks or any partners in the United States to even look at them. Long story short, they wound up getting, taking a loan out from banks in Malaysia. They had investors from Malaysia. Fast forward, at one point, that tribe, the Foxwoods, became the largest casino operation in the country making over a billion dollars a year. Their investors were paid off within three years. Now today, you go to a native finance conference and you've got banks and finance houses all over the place trying to do businesses in Indian country. And less than 25 years ago, they didn't even want to know who we were. So early on, you can see that success. But more importantly, more importantly than the financial success that these partners have achieved, they've received, in my view, a greater success in the fact that they've helped contribute to the betterment of tribal communities, of tribal nations, and for the future of native people and native nations in those particular areas where they've partnered up with. Indian country needs partners. Indian country needs allies. But we don't need people telling us what to do. And once you've been able to be vetted by a tribe, once you've been able to do business with a tribe, and once you've been able to show that you're an honest, good partner bringing value and assets to native nations, you're gonna have strong allies and strong partnerships that can lead to other partnerships in Indian country as well. Many folks have achieved that. And so if you want to venture into Indian country, heed some of the things that I said, and I think you're gonna find a very valuable, very, very excellent business partner in that. Look at Indian country the way it was 60 years ago. 60 years ago, it didn't look anything like it is today. Look at Indian country today. Look at the amount of monies that not just gaming is producing, but all sorts of industries that have grown around Indian country and all different parts of the country. It's one of the best investments that people can make right in their own backyard. Michael, thank you. Thank you, Don. I think you bring up a really good point about how sometimes the rules and regulations, the policies within tribal communities can be a little bit different. And so, Karla, can you please talk to your experience about navigating relationships with the First Peoples Investment Engagement Program and how international norms like the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, reprior and informed consent, how these concepts can play a role in developing strong partnerships in Indian country. Yes, and I should say at the outset that we could really sit up here and talk all day about this. So if things go a little fast, we're all here to talk throughout the conference if people have questions. Again, thank you so much to SOCAP for including us and thank you to those of us, those of you who helped us win the popular vote and got us up here. And thank you, Michael, really, for your introduction, for organizing us. And then I'd also like to acknowledge, so I am the founder-director of the First Peoples Investment Engagement Program. I did a crazy thing where I took over an NGO as a law professor in a university, so that tells you a little bit about how smart or not smart I am. But I'd like to acknowledge here our lead funder on the Nathan Cummings Foundation in the room and then one of our advisory board members, Nick Tilson, who's here, so thank you both for your support of our new program. So our program is really interesting. Actually, it's interesting to have Crystal sitting up here too because the founder of First Peoples Worldwide also founded First Nations Development Institute. And we're really trying to honor that legacy in a couple of significant ways. We're really thinking about development in indigenous communities as two sides of the same coin. One side is outside development coming in. You know the story about negative impacts on indigenous peoples from outside development. I think most of us know that process as something called colonization. And then the other side of the coin is really what we're here to talk about today which is investment opportunities that are self-determined, which I'll talk about that definition in a minute, that have really the opportunity to improve the lives of indigenous peoples and to conduct development in a more responsible and sustainable way. So what we're doing with our organization is we're really thinking hard about where there are areas that could be improved so that this connectivity between investors and indigenous peoples is more consistent and coming from a better place on all sides and can coalesce a little bit better. So we have four pillars that we've been thinking about to inform this. And I know since I'm at Socap everyone likes to talk about pillars. So here are your pillars. The first pillar is really about empowerment. We see on both sides, both on the investor side and on the indigenous side. And to some of the things that Don mentioned, just a real lack of information to allow people to effectively engage with one another. And so the first thing that we think needs to happen is to really empower indigenous peoples and empower investors with the knowledge they need to be able to come to the table together. Of course, once people are empowered, the idea is that we would help connect them and that our organization can serve as a hub for indigenous peoples, companies, banks to connect regarding areas of intersecting interests and issues. And then the third pillar is about engagement. So recognizing that connection's simply not enough, that there's a big gulf of understanding, that there's a gulf of perhaps motivation and tension. Sometimes in these projects, a gap of just who is gonna be there when and as one tribal leader put it to me, this hedge fund is gonna be here for five years and then they're gonna sell their interests and we're here for life. So really helping indigenous peoples and entities engage about where they're at and where they're going. And then we have high hopes. We think that if people are connecting meaningfully with the tools that they need to be able to really engage honestly from a point of knowledge and compassion that we have the opportunity of working with indigenous communities and investors to really make transformational change. And the idea there is to really make tangible progress to transform these outmoded ideas of colonization and of really using indigenous resources but moving more into this new era of indigenous human rights. So Michael asked me to talk a little bit about what that rights-based framework means in this context. And again, this is very complex stuff but I think it's actually pretty easy to understand. So I'll go through it somewhat quickly. So there is a guiding document for indigenous rights now. It's called the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was adopted by the General Assembly in 2007 and every member state in the General Assembly more or less adopted it at that time with four big exceptions, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. All large countries with large populations of indigenous peoples they're in. And then those countries really led by the United States and the Obama administration adopted the declaration in 2009 and 2010. So what's really exciting about the declaration is it really puts forth a global consensus about indigenous rights as human rights and really thinks and deeply and is the result of several years of drafting a negotiation about what that means, especially with respect to development. And so I guess I would say this to all of you investor people that are in the room. The blueprint is there. There's no need, I think, to reinvent the wheel at least in terms of the types of commitments that you're willing to make in engaging with these communities because there is a global standard for this. And for those of you who care about global standards like the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, there is an obligation that investors have a responsibility under the UNGPs to respect human rights. And because the UN declaration is the operative human rights framework for indigenous peoples, there is an obligation for investors to abide by the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. So I hope I threaded that needle clearly for everyone because that's really important. It's not something that we all do out of the good of our hearts. It's not something that should be done because we feel sorry for indigenous peoples or because we want to take advantage of opportunity. There is an affirmative obligation in the UNGPs. So that being said, what does the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples really say to guide what investors should be doing? And there are many articles of the declaration over 40. And although I'm a long-winded law professor, I'm just gonna go through a couple. So the first two articles of the UN declaration are about equality and inclusion. And I've heard a lot about that already today at SOCAP and yesterday. Equality inclusion vis-a-vis development has some pretty significant threads. One is development that supports human rights of indigenous peoples and encourages development that will protect indigenous peoples from discrimination. Partnership with indigenous organizations. This could be contributions related to core businesses. This could be PRI, this could be MRI, this could be philanthropic, this could be impact investing. Exploring opportunities to help include indigenous peoples in the value chain. Sourcing from indigenous-owned businesses. Providing access to capital for indigenous sustained development. I should mention, since I said sustained development, I should say sustainable development and then I should say the sustainable development goals. Because as Don was saying, there are tremendous opportunities to operationalize impact investing in Indian country. I would take it a step further and say there's actually tremendous opportunities to operationalize the SDGs right here in the United States. The United States doesn't just have extra-territorial obligations on the SDGs, I would argue. We have emerging nations right here within our borders. And so how can we think about implementation of the SDGs if that's a yardstick as part of your impact investing as applied to the emerging market economies that are right here in the United States? So those are the first and second articles and how those relate. And then there are several articles, three, four, five, six, and 23 about self-determination and self-governance. And that also goes to a point that Don was making about how when you're working with indigenous communities, there really needs to be a respect for what we say in the US nationhood, what said internationally, indigenous communities or governments. There needs to be a human rights-based respect for self-determination. It's all over the declaration and it really has specific obligations that arise in the development context. One of the things that comes up here is something that some of you in this room may have heard of, which is the concept of free prior and informed consent. Has anyone heard of that or F-PIC? Yeah, so it's interesting. If you go to an Extractive Industries conference, everybody would raise their hand. So that to me kind of shows like there's all these different little knowledge bases and all these little gaps that need to be infilled. So free prior and informed consent dictates that you can't do something to an indigenous community or something that's gonna impact them without achieving their consent that's freely given with full information and ahead of time. And so one of the areas that might be really interesting for you all to think about is renewable projects. So this conversation's been going on in the SDG context actually because goal seven talks about having access to clean energy, right? So everyone says like, oh, we gotta get behind renewables, 100%, this is great. And then the indigenous peoples are like, well, hydropowers are renewable and they're building a dam in my community and by the way, this activist who opposed the dam was just murdered by the government. And so that's a real thing. And just because it's renewable and just because it's impact in a certain way does not mean that it's impact that's in line with the principles of the declaration or in human rights. And I just wanted to be sure to mention that. So the other thing that I just wanted to mention about self-determination is as Don said, it's really requires participatory development that it's not okay to do something to indigenous peoples that really things want to be done in partnership with tribal communities or indigenous peoples. And that does take work. That's why we're doing what we do. It's really about trying to provide tool kits and support for doing things as we say in a good way, which means with everybody's agreement and consensus. So I guess I would just end by saying, I think it's a really exciting time. I think that impact investing has just a really outsize and wonderful role to play in changing the paradigm for indigenous peoples, a paradigm that's been going on for a very long time. And also to really create return. As Don said, these are lucrative projects in many ways. So I do think that the work that's going on in the space really has the potential to be transformational for indigenous peoples and tribal communities. Thank you. Thank you so much, Carla. Kind of continuing to build on that, Lacey, as the treasurer of Cherokee Nation, you obviously are right at the nexus of all the development or economic and community development that happens in your guys's region. Can you give us a couple examples of potential outcomes partnering with Indian country? Meaning domestic economic development, social impact investing, transformative development, supporting existing circular economies? Absolutely. First, I just want to thank you all for coming here today. And I do want to give a little bit of background on Cherokee Nation in general. We are the largest federally recognized in Native American tribe in the United States. We have 360,000 citizens. Our reservation is Northeastern Oklahoma comprised of 9,234 square miles. We have a very modern sophisticated tripartite government consisting of executive, legislative, and traditional branches. And we have a number of subsidiaries and we operate first and foremost as a sovereign tribal government, but also as a nonprofit, a foundation, and a for-profit corporation. Our for-profit corporation, the net income from that, goes directly into two investments. One, investing in social services that are invested in the Cherokee people and all the Natives that we serve today to see returns on investments in the future, as well as job creation within our 14-county reservation that enables our people to have solid access and as well as to the economies, building upon the economies in which we reside. One way to think about tribes is to think about us as somewhat as corporations that will never pick up and move. So just because another country has a better tax code, we're not going to pick up and move and go to another country. We're invested in our places, in our communities right now, in the here and now. We do tell the story that tribal profits are not used, tribal profits are used for social and community services not to buy a CEO his second yacht. And so in going into some of the partnerships that we've created, I'll talk a little bit about Macy's. I think everybody's familiar with Macy's and this is obviously a for-profit public company. In 2013, they were looking for a mid-America distribution site for their online sales and the competition got really hot between Oklahoma and Texas. Texas has an extremely friendly, pro-business friendly environment, no state income tax and a huge closing fund that they utilized to recruit businesses to locate within the state of Texas. And so it wasn't until Cherokee Nation came to the table and we brought both a competitive and a comparative advantage because the piece of property that they were looking at for the distribution site was located within our reservation. And so we brought four major things to the table. One is the federal tax incentives that is open to companies that are bringing businesses within to tribal reservations through the Indian Employment Tax Credit. So tax credits for every Indian or spouse of an Indian that are directly going to your bottom line. Accelerated appreciation, which again, tax credit going directly to your bottom line. We told Macy's that we would host all their job fairs for both their seasonal and their permanent employees. And if they were willing to hire a Cherokee citizen, that we would train up that Cherokee to have the exact skillset that they needed to go to work for them. The road out in front of their facility needed an upgrade. And in order to be able to get all those container trucks in and out, we said we'll put you on our federal roads list and we'll upgrade that road. And then the unheard of, something that you almost never hear from one business to another business, but our subsidiary Cherokee Nation Businesses gave Macy's half a million dollars to use at their discretion to incent this business to locate within the 14 counties because we knew that this was gonna be a major job creator within our area. And so we're constantly looking for partnerships, good partners that are going to create good jobs, sustainable jobs. We're not looking for the environmental polluters. We're looking for those companies that are going to be respectful to our values that are not just looking at transactional engagements, but our potential investors are searching for meaning by creating a lasting impact. Again, seven generations in the future. Partnerships with tribes are truly two-fold at least, both a financial return on investment today and a social return on investment many generations in the future. So what better way to support domestic economic development than by supporting the circular economies that the tribes are willing and able to provide? And so with that, I thank you all again for being here and hope to be a resource for you if you have any questions in the future. Thank you so much for that, Lacey and Crystal. Your work with the CDFIs around the nation really do exactly this, helping provide the seed money for transformative development in our entrepreneur citizenry in our communities. So can you speak a little bit about what those opportunities for investment and partnerships look like in native nations? Happy to, thank you. My name is Crystal Cornelius. I'm the executive director of First Nations, the Wista Corporation, and we are really a long-term backbone organization for lack of a better word. So we are a certified native CDFI and we are the only intermediary lender in the nation specifically serving native CDFIs. And while that's a really nice platform, I wish I could say, and we're actually fairly lucky that we have some additional intermediaries coming into the space, native led and native owned into the CDFI industry. One, brief little bit of history. So Don did a wonderful job of really kind of giving an overview of what Indian country looks like, the diversity of Indian country and the amount of tribes that we have located within the United States. So as with any business model, location, location, location is extremely important. So majority of our tribes upon colonization were moved to extremely rural areas. And with this, we see a lack of economic opportunity based on the rural location of these tribal communities. So one thing that we found very beneficial. In 1999, quick history, Congress essentially mandated a study and it took two years. So they asked Indian country at large and their question to themselves was, we keep giving a massive amount of federal funds to native tribes, why are a majority of these tribes still experiencing extreme poverty? So they did listening sessions for two years all across the nation, Alaska and Hawaii and a report was issued called the Native American Lending Study. And what that indicated was 17 major barriers to economic development within Indian country. And the first and foremost was a lack of affordable credit and capital to Indian country for private sector entrepreneurship or tribes to grow their additional assets. So this was very fortuitous and at the same time during the Clinton administration, the CDFI fund was born. Based on this study, there was a set aside and it still exists today, money specifically for native communities to create their own private financial institutions. So in 1999, we had two certified CDFIs. Today we have 70. And simply being when we look at the trajectory of the amount of these organizations, it's because they're working. It's because they're working in markets that are right for investment opportunity and growth. And it's working because we understand and have deep seated relationships with our communities in and of itself. So as a Wista being the only intermediary lender, we've really walked along the path these past 20 years and number one, helping to create quite a bit of these 77 CDFIs. And most importantly, typically we are the first investor in local CDFIs. And we have quite an obstacle Indian country at large in number one, being able to tell our own narrative of the strength and beauty of our communities. And then when we're looking at bringing in additional investment, there tends to be an inherent viewpoint that Indian country is a risky bet. Now that may be based on, you're not necessarily understanding some of these sovereignty issues. You tend to be outside of a location. And again, coming back to narrative, the rest of Mainstay America tends to know about Indian country based on non-Indians telling them about Indian country. So what's really beautiful about the native CDFI movement in and of itself is native CDFIs 99%. And this isn't only restricted just to native CDFIs. This is the whole CDFI industry at large in which we have over 1,200 organizations working throughout the country in marginalized communities providing access to credit and capital. Within native communities, we 99% were nonprofit organizations. So we partner with the tribes, but we're separate entities. And we really over the past 20 years have built up the financial fabric of our communities. So with that, a major endeavor for CDFIs obviously is the conjunction of education in correlation with financing. So before you receive any type of loan, we'll find that financial literacy courses are mandated as well as business courses, as well as home ownership courses based on what loan product you're offering. The sophistication of our CDFIs have grown immensely as well. So I can say initially when we looked at the beginning of the industry, typically what you'll find in a lot of these rural communities is number one, we know that there's not access to capital and credit, but there tended to be quite a bit of predatory lending institutions outside on border towns. And when we tried to partner with banks or some of our tribal members would go to banking institutions whether to get a credit repair loan, a business loan or possibly a housing loan, a majority of these banks are agricultural lenders and our people didn't have the collateral to meet their credit guidelines. So the answer was no. With the advent of the CDFI industry, we have now come to a yes. So a majority still do provide, but in the inception of our industry really provided a lot of consumer lending to either help build up credit or rectify past credit and then we've really built a fabric for private sector development. So we have a majority of our CDFIs, I would say about 70% provide business lending and the other 30% are really looking at housing endeavors. So with the ability to access credit, that's affordable, that's pertinent and that's patient within our tribal communities have really changed the economic landscape. Another important note too is a majority of CDFIs and these tribal loan funds are non-depository institutions. This has really allowed us to establish relationships with larger banking institutions or even some of the banking institutions on the border towns to create first time account holders within their organizations. So within First Nations, the Wester preview of services, we have the widest use financial education curriculum used in Indian country. It's called Building Native Communities Financial Skills for Families. We're now on our fifth edition. So with this, we track our data over the past 20 years based on the provision and the partnerships that were made with banking institutions from 20 years ago to today, we now have over 100,000 tribal members that are first time account holders and holding their funds or their savings in secured accounts, number one. Number two, and I think it's an interesting fact too, Indian country has changed so much just within the sophistication of self-determination in that a prime example on the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the longest standing native CDFIs in the nation is the Lakota funds. Again, this is in South Dakota and the executive director came from a, her name is Tani Brunch, from a credit union background. Well, Pine Ridge is a huge, they have a huge land base and so with the depository services and credit services that were needed, there wasn't a lot of participation from the regular banks outside with outside the reservation borders per se and within South Dakota. She ended up creating the first, one of the first tribal credit unions to serve her people. So now we have 18 native owned banks, we have 13 native owned credit unions that are providing these services. So really with, I think my overall story is when you provide capital in any type of marginalized communities, obviously we're speaking on Indian country, the opportunity for investment, the opportunity for true impact, for place-based impact has been phenomenal and when we look at what those opportunities are, I just referenced 18 native owned banks. Social investors can be depositors in these banks, they can directly invest with the native CDFI to help them meet their growing lending demand. You can partner with the tribe, you can do participation loans for larger infrastructure projects. Maybe it's a new market tax credit project, maybe it's low income tax credit projects, bond guarantee, an equity position in a larger infrastructure deal. The opportunities are really boundless and we have shown within 20 years of lending, Indian country is a good bet. My organization personally has revolved over $17 million in Indian country since our inception, being the first debt investor into these native CDFIs, we've only experienced one default in 20 years. We have never experienced a default of any investor debt, we have always paid back on time. So I think when we look at capitalization in Indian country that may be a little bit obscure for outside investors to understand how to maneuver within the confines of sovereignty, but capital also tends to have a pretty basic language. So when you get down to the financials and you get down to these deals being solid per se on an underwriting perspective, we have all of those opportunities. We've got the capital demand and we really have the ability to show true community impact that is sustainable for generations to come. So I think that's one of the stronger points that we have for investment within Indian country. We've got successful models with self-determination. We have been doing that ourselves tribal nations, tribal non-profits for generations and we are simply willing to partner with like-minded organizations that can understand the impact of investing within Indian country and really being stewards and ambassadors for our larger causes. Thank you, Crystal. So I know that that was a lot to cover in just an hour to summarize slightly. We have great diversity of culture, people, history and context in our native communities. There are sets of global norms and sustainable development goals that we can operationalize domestically. And native nations have the ability to create unique deals, as we heard from Lacey and the Cherokee Nation. And the opportunities to invest growing systems are everywhere in Indian country. It's a good bet to invest in tribal communities. We're good partners and we're open for business. So with that, I just wanna thank the panel so much if we give them a round of applause. And we have about 10 minutes left. So if there's any questions in the audience, they are recording. So there's a microphone floating around somewhere, the back of the room there. Feel free, raise your hand. While we're waiting on the first question, I just wanna make a statement sort of summing this up in totality. But when the tribes are successful, everyone in our community benefits non-native and native alike. No, there we go, okay. Hi, Hannah Apricot with the Abundant Earth Foundation. And we invest in and also give grants mostly to regenerative ag projects. And I was just wondering if any of you have some recommendations for organizations or yourselves if you know of some contacts we can look at for permaculture or regenerative ag projects to help support. Thank you so much for that. And I just wanted to reiterate that we'll all be around the conference. And so please do approach us if you have any other questions you didn't wanna ask now. But specifically with Ag, one of the things that comes to mind, native agriculture has had a hard go in this country till recently. I don't know if you're familiar with the Keeps Eagle settlement that happened, which was a settlement from the federal government for them not awarding loans and grants to tribal farmers and agriculture communities in Indian country. That was an over $300 million settlement, $460 million settlement. And not all of it was dispersed. So the Keeps Eagle Trust has been assigned and they'll be doing an RFA soon where they'll be putting out requests for projects to kind of reseed and reignite agriculture for Indian people by Indian people. So you can kind of follow that around. I don't know if you guys have any more specifics. The Cherokee Nation created a Buffalo Ranch about four or five years ago with reclaimed Buffalo from the Badlands. And so we are absolutely looking for opportunities to partner on Buffalo production as well. As well as aquaponics. I know that's an area of which we have great interests, not only from our tribal nonprofits, but also the nation as well. We're looking into that. Our parent company, First Nations Development Institute has really spearheaded food sovereignty work for the past 20 some years. So I would definitely use them as a resource and specifically we can get together after the panel, but in working with native communities throughout the United States, specifically the native CDFI sector, there's quite a bit of exciting work going on in Hawaii. And I really have to do a shout out to native Hawaiians because when we talk about invisibility among Native Americans just per se, typically our Alaskan and our native Hawaiian natives tend to be somewhat left out of the mix in the lower 48. So Hawaii is doing a great job of putting together their own food sovereignty and projects. And we've got quite a bit going on in the Northern Plains as well. So I'll get with you after and certainly give you a host of names. Thank you for the question. That's wonderful. Any other questions? Hi there. My name is Sarah Medanik and I'm a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta in Canada and I'm really curious about the relationship with the federal government and legislative opportunities to push things forward like procurement contracts with development projects with communities. And I was just wondering if those are active conversations that are happening or what the status is. So maybe it'd be helpful to contextualize a little bit of what's going on in Canada which I think is what's informing the question. So Canada has committed through its government to full implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and one of the things that the Canadian government is doing is really trying to promote joint venture and partnership between industry and first nations in Canada. So it's super exciting. Roughly at the same time that Canada made that announcement we had a bit of regime change in this country that has had tremendous negative impacts for Native Americans. And I think that there has been a real stall in forward movement of legislative activity to try to promote that type of thing. We do have some existing programs in place still but I think that right now it's try to keep them from threat and then hopefully very soon try to bolster them more to be more responsive to all of the opportunities that we're talking about. But I think any of us to probably be happy to talk offline with you about the state of things. It's a little bit influx at the moment. And just to add to that some of the things that Carla's referring to is with this new administration they've been doing things that are having some devastating effects on Indian country and certainly can have further devastating effects. Most recently they took land from the Mashpee Wampanoag and took it out of trust because of a very poor interpretation of a Supreme Court case called Kashiri V. Salazar. That's devastating. It harkens back to the time of the termination era. So it's very, very scary for Indian country. When this president came into office within an extremely short period of time opened the doors for Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL Pipeline to start up construction again through reservations, through sacred sites, through allotment lands, putting our water supplies in danger and permanently could permanently damage and destroy our cultural sites. So I applaud Canada from what they're doing unfortunately. We're taking giant step backwards here. Happy to talk to anybody about some of the work that Narf's doing on those issues. If you'd like to speak later today or at the conference. Any other questions? Wonderful. Well, thank you all again for joining us today. It's been a great hour spending up here with you guys. And thanks to the panel. One more time. Thank you.