 My name is Alana Linderoth. I am a program officer at Manga Bay, which is an international environmental journalism nonprofit. We report on environmental science, conservation, a lot on Indigenous people, local communities, tropical forests. We mostly focus on places having acute environmental impacts, and that have the most ecologically rich regions. So we don't do a lot of U.S.-based reporting, actually. A lot of our reporting is in Southeast Asia, South America, and we do original reporting in multiple languages. And yeah, again, you can find us at Manga Bay. I think that's all I'll say about myself. It's a pleasure to be here, and even more so, I'm excited to welcome this panel, where I'm going to give you a little background, and then they'll each have an opportunity to share a little bit about what brings them to this particular panel, and then we'll dig right into the conversation. Okay, so to my left here is Anir Benami. He is the co-founder and managing director of Candid Group, where he works with clients to deploy capital in support of a more sustainable and just economy. At Candid Group, Anir co-leads the Afterglow Climate Justice Fund, providing catalytic debt capital to bring climate solutions to disinvested communities across the U.S. I'm going to let's see. Okay, it's not in the list here. They're not sitting in order, so that's okay. Next, I have Pinjani Singhha. He is the co-founder of Amazonian Impact Ventures in 2020. Oh, he co-founded, excuse me, Amazonian Impact Ventures in 2020, and is passionate about addressing the climate emergency challenge via investing in social entrepreneurial businesses in the Amazon. Amazonian Impact Ventures has been set up with the aim of providing access to capital via impact-linked finance to indigenous communities and small holder farmers together with technical assistance in order to improve the supply chain and forest protection in the Amazon. Next, we have Suzanne Singer. Suzanne Singer, she co-founded Native Renewables with a vision to provide energy access for tens of thousands of Hopi and Navajo families who live without electricity. Her engineering background provides the technical foundation to develop programs that promote tribal energy independence, offer affordable off-grid solar energy solutions, and build a solar workforce. Yeah, and she's going to fill in some more background as well. Next, I have, I'd like to welcome Emile Sairin-Guelinga. Emile is a sustainable finance consultant and member of the Kichwa people of the Sarai Yuka in Ecuador. Emile has worked with financial institutions such as asset managers and venture capitalists, standard setters, NGOs, and indigenous people in various projects promoting sustainable investments. Emile was co, was also the co, sorry, the lead author of the Respecting Indigenous Rights and Actionable Zoo Diligence Toolkit for Institutional Investors, which guides pension funds and asset managers on indigenous rights. Finally, I would like to introduce Brett Isaac. Brett Isaac was born on Denai lands growing up near Keyenta within the Navajo Nation in an area called Baby Rocks. He is of the Towering House Clan, born of the Salt Clan, and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. Brett Isaac's leadership at Navajo Power transcends mere business strategy, making him a true champion of indigenous communities. He plays a pivotal role in creating pathways for these communities to unlock the potential of their natural resources, thrive through clean energy development, and achieve energy independence. Building off his decade of experience in creating solar and battery storage for underserved homes in the Navajo Nation, Brett is working to scale solar opportunities and create meaningful equity for indigenous communities. So it's, yeah, my honor to be here with these movers and shakers in this sector. Next, I'm going to let the panelists just again share a little bit more about who they are and what brings them to this particular session. And then we'll dig into some of the discussion. Thank you. Hi, thank you. I'm Anir Benami, again with the Candid group. We're an investment advisory based just across the Bay Bridge here in Oakland. We're celebrating our 10th year anniversary very soon and have over the years worked with clients to deploy capital in support of disinvested marginalized communities. Within that have been committed to sort of pushing the envelope on what it means to do this work and into more innovative models, more community centered models have related to this topic. A couple of projects, a couple of companies that we've supported through this advisory business include working with Brett and Navajo Power and using some, we'll talk a little bit more about kind of some of the innovative thinking and structuring that went into that and working with Native American natural foods, which is a business that aims to revitalize the bring back bison herds to Native communities. Outside of that, the advisory business, as Lana pointed out, we are now launching a climate justice fund, which will be focused specifically on deploying capital or deploying climate solutions in the U.S. in disinvested communities and marginalized communities, again requiring really kind of catalytic capital, really filling, looking to sort of fill the gaps required to make these projects happen and there are many gaps to make those projects happen. This is our second debt fund, debt vehicle. Our first debt vehicle that we launched a few years ago is the Olamina fund led by the amazing Leslie Lindo, sitting over there, and the Olamina fund has already deployed $40 million with a focus on black and indigenous communities working through three intermediaries and supporting community-centered projects, real estate and land projects. I should point out too, and we'll touch on this later on, I'm sure, throughout the work we are, there's sort of this deep commitment to making sure that we are shifting not just where the capital is flowing, but sort of how it's flowing and how decisions are being made, and making sure that it's not just us kind of sitting here and making, picking the projects that get funded and how they get funded, but really including communities in sort of a deep way in that process. Hi, so I'm Pejani, so I'm based out in London, so I co-founded Amazonian Park Ventures about three and a half years ago, and what we wanted to target was, you know, addressing the bottleneck, which is access to funding for marginalized communities, and, you know, we invest currently with multiple communities in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, mainly in the bi-economy, because we believe that a standing forest is worth more than a cut-down forest, so so far we've been investing in multiple products like Brazil nuts, Acaí, Macambo, Aguaje, Ungurawi, Macambo, you know, loads of more, Guayusa is one of more, and the idea is, you know, providing livelihood to, you know, the indigenous communities is the first port of call if you want to address climate change in the long run, and I think we've proven that running a social enterprise actually can make money and the community and also work for, you know, investors as well, and our aim now is to kind of scale it up and invest in multiple communities in these parts of the rainforest. Hello, yeah, it's Suzanne Cigarionichie, Catnissatine Nishlin, and good morning everybody, I'm Suzanne Cigarionichie, I'm the Executive Director and one of the co-founders of Native Renewables, and we are a 501c3 organization that's based in Northern Arizona, but we started our organization, it was founded by two indigenous women in 2016, because we were really frustrated that tens of thousands of our families and our communities still have no access to grid-tied electricity, and so since then, we've been developing our programs, a lot of which include we are installing off-grid solar units for families that can power refrigerators, lights, cell phones, charging electronics devices, but also we felt really strongly about building our own technical capacity within our own communities locally, and so that meant we had to build a workforce program, so I can leave forward to talking more about that, but our mission is to bring indigenous-led, affordable solar power solutions and knowledge to Dineh or Navajo and Hopi communities. Hi everyone, I'm Emil Siren-Guelinga from Ecuador, from the Kicho people of Sarayaku, and I work with the Business and Human Rights Resource Center focused on promoting indigenous community-owned or community-led renewable energy projects, and I also work with Pajani with Amos and Impact Ventures, but what brings me here to this panel is to zoom out a bit and give a macro perspective on why it's important to invest and support indigenous peoples, and I think the answer is very simple, because indigenous peoples across the world protect the last remaining nature in this planet, and if it wasn't for indigenous peoples, then most of that wouldn't be there, so indigenous peoples comprise 6% of the world's population, but protect over 8% of the world's most diverse areas. Unfortunately, when we defend our territories and our rights, we face attacks, criminalization, and even assassinations, so over the last decade, over 2,000 environmental defenders have been killed, 40% of which were indigenous, and this is also happening in climate change solutions such as renewable energy, and in some countries there have been renewable energy products that have displaced many indigenous peoples, and I want to illustrate with a personal story of my community what does it look like to grow up in such a community that's protecting the rights and defending our lives, so in my community, Sarayaco, we have kicked out 6 oil companies from the territory, so until today it's free of destruction and free of deforestation, and we didn't have, the people in our community didn't have any education or any resources, so imagine what we could have done if we had all those resources and if we were part of the decision making, and unfortunately that's not happening, and the companies, I mean you don't often hear about those details in the media, but the strategies that the companies and governments have used against us, they hire teams of anthropologists and sociologists find ways to divide the communities, to divide us, and then they invited our territories with public forces, with military, and fortunately we were able to kick them out, and 10 years later we were able to win a victory in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has set up precedent for other communities to be able to defend their rights as well, so yes, so I think that goes to show why it's so important that to support community-led projects and not externally imposed self-determined projects, make sure that indigenous peoples are part of the decision making, and each indigenous community or people are distinct, so we as indigenous peoples, when we meet other indigenous peoples, the first thing is to learn about them, we cannot go with the presumptions of how to work, so I think my main message is to support the self-determination of indigenous peoples, because otherwise we won't have, otherwise all of those climate change initiatives and nature protection, etc., it's simply not going to work, thank you. Sorry, I've been trying to wake you all up, my name is Brent Isaac, I am the founder and executive chairman of NavoPower, really what brings me to this space is, NavoPower is a clean energy developer, we're a public benefit corporation, and we're really trying to catalyze some of the biggest projects, clean energy projects in the country, cited on tribal lands, and working to maximize benefits for indigenous communities, our purpose is really to add indigenous voices into that conversation around transition, historically our communities have been impacted by energy industry, coal, oil, gas, uranium, all those different entities came through our communities and left kind of a path of destruction in its past, as well as trauma. In order for that to not be the same with renewables, and to not be the same with economics, we felt that it was important for us to own that direction going forward, creating a company that essentially sets the table, the other thing is also being able to create the platform for the injection point of capital to do good within these communities, we want to be able to develop these projects in a way that looks at sustainability around their impact, as well as building community benefit structures that actually are tuned to the community's needs, it's a holistic way of thinking around energy in terms of how it interfaces with these communities, what it gives and what it takes back, the other thing is we also want to look at how our communities interface in a global setting when it comes to participating in these regional markets, we build competitive projects that have to compete with everything in a national grid system, so looking at solar and storage as a way to essentially create that economic engine and driver for these communities to thrive, the idea behind Navajo powers formation was really born out of these transition conversations, the decline of revenues, the decline of jobs due to the exit of fossil fuel from our communities left the void and we wanted to be able to fill that void with a much more optimistic viewpoint of what energy can do, myself coming up and growing up in a coal community, I always envisioned our ability to change our direction by participating in these systems, influencing how finance interfaces with our communities, interfacing how we take things like energy and put them to our advantage and so my journey into this and the honor to sit amongst these people is really about networking, finding funding and resources so that we can catalyze this transition, federal initiatives like the inflation reduction act are great on paper, but how do we get from where our communities are to where they have to be to be able to catalyze that impact, how are we going to take those billions of dollars committed from the federal government and land them in communities that historically have had limited access to funds like that, that requires organizations like ours and the folks here taking this mission aligned capital and putting it in the hands of people that can actually make meaningful change and so I'm very honored to be here and thank you for sitting with us today. Thanks everyone, yes, yeah it's I am, this panel is really diverse in that we have a business, we have non-profit, we have investors and people strategizing and consulting on investments so yeah I think this is going to be a really good discussion. To kick us off I want to just ask the question of what do investors need to consider when investing in indigenous people local communities to tackle climate change and kind of a sub question of that is how does the conventional impact invest, how does conventional impact investing not apply to when investing in indigenous people local communities? Yeah people can just jump in. I was going to say I mean based on experience in working with Kendi and Anir and Morgan and the team over there you know our experience is that innovation is just the starting point you know investing in these communities requires some degree of understanding and meeting the communities and organizations like us where we are you know our communities don't have historic relationships of finance commercial banking didn't reach our community so financial tools are very limited those of us that were privileged enough to go and experience that in the world and have access to capital are trying to translate that back to how it benefits the communities you know we want to institutions to try to see how we could get benefit from that but the first thing that really was kind of a point of emphasis is understanding the framework that's going to that the infrastructure that's got to be created to create that investable injection point where does that capital go in to work on behalf of the impact but also you know work within the rules of all the regulatory systems so that it you know it does everything it needs to do to be effective and one other thing last year I say is like there also is a bit of patience that indigenous communities need in order to like see these things through you know as we are learning as we are deploying you know we're kind of creating new markets and new opportunities with the same stroke so working with a lot of foundations has been about providing a lot of conversations around the education around what it is we're doing how we hope to do it and how that intersects with the initiatives that foundations are putting forward as impacts. I'll just jump in because it's sort of related to that same sort of thread of work right so maybe thinking about three things ownership trust and capacity so on the ownership side you know a project like or portfolio projects like like those that Navajo Power is developing once they're up and running they're really lucrative right they big projects that generate a lot of economic benefit the question is who that economic benefit goes to right if if all it does is well these are great projects that are putting clean electrons on the grid but ultimately they're owned by whatever Goldman Sachs or not you know not to pick on Goldman Sachs but fill in the name fill in the blank investor and all the benefit flows to that investor that's that's a problem right and so part of the the gap was making sure that there is early the early capital that comes in was structured as debts right and so and not equity so they don't have to sell ownership of the project so equity so early in the process and they get to retain ownership and the second piece around trust again one example as Brett obviously mentioned these communities are not exactly they have no reason to necessarily have they have a lot of reasons not to trust outside investors and sources of capital coming into these communities or developers coming into these communities and you know this needs to kind of move at the pace of of trust and one cool example in this with this investment was that instead of if you've ever negotiated an investment with opposing legal counsel on each side you know that pretty quickly the sort of trust kind of can go out the door and the legal counsel they're trained to just think like worst case scenario how the other side could like screw you over and what are all the ways to sort of protect you right the way this process was actually conducted there was one legal counsel for both sides right so we did we actually share legal counsel and kind of taking instead of sort of opposing sides of the table with like this is one problem we're all kind of looking at it we're both sort of on the same side of the table and then the third capacity right so yeah you know there is often a to the point about billions of dollars that could start flowing into these communities we need to build the capacity of the organizations that kind of know how to how to how to how to even ask for that money how to how to structure set up structures for that money right and so there is a an element of the capacity building and and and philanthropic support that is is critical there maybe I'll share in our experience what we've faced so far when you invest in you know IPLC is indigenous people in other communities it takes a longer time to kind of get to know the community higher transaction costs lower ticket size so we've found that you know you need to go beyond the normal traditional lending methods so blended finance is is kind of really much needed so if there's any you know invest in the room you know it is quite important to have long-term patient capital when you're starting to develop capacity because if you look at any industry that's been developed let's take you know EVs it's been heavily subsidized by governments and by you know local community local councils but when it comes to indigenous people on their land there's no kind of that sort of subsidy available or cheap debt available so concessionary and blended finance is so important at this stage to build capacity and then you know it's a very very lucrative business that the community and investors can can benefit from in the long term but they have to allow the you know the entrepreneurs and the community is to build their their capacity and I think that's a crucial part in my opinion yeah I think the ensuring there is an indigenous led component to the work is really critical that helps goes a long way with the trust piece of things but also understanding the a lot of the community members know what is best for their community so coming in and saying this is what you should do it's not really the best way to approach people easy way to turn people off and I think for our work specifically thinking about talking about the technical workforce piece and having our own experts in the community I think can translate also to the financial piece and how does knowledge about kind of what I was talking about knowledge around financing lending the the technical terms like just to give you a corollary how do we in Navajo language how do you explain what an inverter is so there's a whole conversation discussion we're having on how do different people explain that and I can imagine the same is true when you're talking about I want to give grandma alone she doesn't speak English these concepts are new to her how do you make sure she fully understands that and you're not taking advantage of the community members that just don't have that base knowledge is really important and then I think some of the the things that make it really challenging for us is recognizing the affordability piece of if you want if you wanted to do financing lending sometimes it's not there for all community members but have definitely been taken advantage of and their resources have been extracted and yet nothing went back into these families homes so then that goes for me into like an equity lens is it fair what do you charge families who have had so much taken from them and don't have electricity so there's like lots of different I think dynamics that are pieces of at least our work I assume also everyone else's work as well that come into this conversation even though you're just trying to get to one particular end goal and I think for us a lot of times our model is we donate systems to families we subsidize that cost and I don't know if that's that that's sustainable long term but for now I think it's an interesting way that we're approaching things in addition to all these different pieces and how we all have different approaches so my perspective from the Amazon it's very similar to susan's sometimes well in the Amazon we don't really have much access to commercial capital or or someone but there are a lot of organizations and grants that come to work with indigenous communities and in some cases there is a presumption of what's what will work best for the community but unless you have grown up in those communities it's very difficult to to know what's best for that community so and and even for for me as an individual grown up there I'm still learning about it so for an outsider to come and know what's best it's yeah it's it's not going to be the optimal outcome so I think being humble and learning and listening I think that's the first starting point great thanks um this leads me to my next questions what which is what are the biggest barriers that indigenous people local communities face when trying to access capital I think globally it's not just indigenous people marginalized communities have difficulty accessing capital even in in a dev of country like this because of the lack of collateral so you know investors need to change their mindset about that and say you know not everyone has got a house or a car to pledge in for a loan so there's different ways of doing it and I think for us that's the biggest issue they've been facing I think just to add on to a little bit the conversation earlier historically in talking to investment a lot of thinking about the tax investment a lot of people will say well your projects aren't big enough we don't really your portfolio is too small so they don't even bother talking to us and I think that's starting to change and I think as again I'm new to this this financial world so I mean I use all the right terminology but also that's part of the barrier is learning as an organization what we want to do and be able to trust people we're learning from um is definitely that trust piece is everywhere in these conversations um and I think some of the challenging things I've heard from other communities is it's been mentioned already but lack of expertise in moving forward building these products and if you don't have the expertise and you don't have the capital to hire the people contract the people that can build these things that you need to move the money forward it becomes extremely challenging and a lot of communities hope for example is really frustrated not being able to have the resources to bring on the right people to write grants or put financial portfolios together or even bring ideas to them explain what the different concepts are so that's I would say for me I would say the top two is just the capacity in the trust there's a statistic that in billions people receive less than one percent of climate financing and that's supposed to increase now because of recent agreements such as the global biodiversity framework but the issue that we see in the Amazon is that as Susanne said because we historically haven't been exposed to those types of markets or organizations we don't necessarily have the expertise or know how or the networks to be able to access those and also when this financing is increasing usually what's happening in the Amazon is that those funds are managed by intermediaries rather than by us so I think the challenge for us is to be able to have those networks build that expertise within the communities and yeah to be able to receive and manage those resources and and yeah find our ways to solve climate change solutions or to tackle climate change in accordance with our own world views which we know have been working for hundreds or thousands of years I think one of the biggest barriers is like to me there's two things one's perception it's perceived that these communities are not in like a ready position or there's a lot of difficulty in deploying the impact in some way one of the reasons commercial capital isn't available is our policy systems in indigenous communities can be hard to understand because it isn't it wasn't never it wasn't ever built for purpose to use it was built to control the like communities and then to kind of there was almost like an imperialism almost there was an imperialism that was placed over a lot of our communities that foundationally really limited our access to a lot of resources the other thing is I think there's also a bit of like self-confidence within our communities and organizations that we don't try because we just don't think it's there we we perceive ourselves to be limited because one we never had access to and we think it's for another crowd but the other is you know I think a lot of institutions have yet to kind of bridge that gap like I said the funding always seems like it's just on the other side of the glass we can see it but you know having friendly capital is really about coming inside with us you know coming kind of kind of meeting us across that bridge when I look at like how you know even federal funding reaches these communities there's always some caveat that we can't overcome there's always something they put in there like a poison pill that makes it historically hard you know and really it's it's the limitations of understanding what's needed to be able to deploy capital like what what is you know and I think about this when it comes to like energy development you know we have like the Department of Energy has a loan program office that existed for like 14 years now it has zero loans deployed you know and through the inflation reduction act it went from 2 billion to 20 billion but they still you know they're they're wanting to deploy capital but what's the limiting factor even in the federal nexus of things their trust responsibility back to communities in the US they haven't quite figured out how to do that and I feel that's a place that you know foundations and philanthropic capital can help fill that bridge because that's where we need those to take that risk and to take on that challenge because I believe if we unlock that and we inform what that is that'll make that barrier non-existent I was going to lift up the potential of sort of allyship or partnerships I'm thinking of an example of a model or project actually not in an indigenous community but maybe relevant it's a solar project in in in Brooklyn that was being developed by a local environmental justice group led by a Latina woman and you know this this group has real real credibility real relationships in community they are able to attract members of the community to the project they are able to identify the best location and secure the best locations for community solar projects and they had been sort of trying to push this project forward for for years really but it is their first go at this right they they haven't developed a a clean energy project previously and they also kind of don't speak finance right it's hard for them there is a there is a bridge there is a divide there are that's hard to bridge right and so they ultimately partnered with and created a joint venture with a clean energy developer and that project is sort of now moving forward with joint ownership right there is a a group that has done this in various communities and they are they're able to sort of pull the capital into the project and then and then this this environmental justice group and the project is owned 5050 right between the sort of community leaders and this community group and the and the clean energy developers I think that model of sort of is very complimentary right and both side both sides of this are needed right to move the project forward I want to follow up on a point and mail brought up which is you know there's a lot of attention being put on climate change and climate justice and indigenous people local communities but most of the money is being managed by NGOs and intermediate intermediaries and I want to follow up on like how get a little more detailed on how that dynamic is maybe the pros and the cons that you've all experienced or so you can speak to of the indigenous people local communities actually able to implement the projects so that little more digging into that intermediary role and your take on that yeah so I can share kind of our experience from the philanthropy side of things a few weeks ago I released an op-ed with the executive director of the Honnold Foundation talking about trust based philanthropy as a model and I think some of the highlights of that essentially is if you're going to give us money can you just trust this that we're going to do the work and create less red tape to make us do the work I think it's funny some of the conversations we've had is like if it's trust based philanthropy you should just trust the partners both ways or don't give us money so I think it's an interesting it seems really obvious but I don't think it always is I think also to be supportive of our long-term goals some of the best funders that we've had have given us multi-year money we have a phone call at the end of the year and that is it and that is amazing so I think pushing other at least in the philanthropy world to model after that and it's like if you've added us great and let's move forward the other I think new thing that's happening is the I'll call it wraparound services sometimes we'll call that but technical support that we may need so one of our funders is giving us a business coach to work with so we can figure out our potential things how would we scale up in a way that makes sense for us and not just pick a number out of the blue and then say that's our goal and so I think some of those things it has been really helpful helping us think about wellness is a new thing helping us think about how we further support our staff in comms training so there's all kinds of things I think are a part of this work that are not focused exactly on the install pieces of things that have been really helpful and then in terms of the the money yeah it'd be great if money went directly to organizations on the front line grassroots on the ground that's been a big complaint among a lot of the nonprofit entities we support is sure this entity that's huge will get a lot of money but they're not actually do the implementers so they're the idea and money managers and then tiny bits of money will actually go to the implementers that are doing the work so hopefully that's changing but that's kind of what it makes me think of I think from the community perspective it's a bit difficult to challenge the big or large NGOs or intermediaries that are managing much of this money just because because they if we challenge them it might have repercussions for us in terms of the the money or the projects that they support so I think it's really important that non-indigenous communities also seek to challenge this system or structure in which indigenous people are not receiving the money directly or because just doing it from the community it's it's difficult so I think it's yeah it's important to have support internationally and yeah maybe I would just say that I think we have seven years left to kind of address the SDGs you know we spent three years in due diligence sometimes with you know international national NGOs so we really need to kind of speed up their process and you know decentralize and have deadlines like private sector do you know like on a Friday night you should really deliver the project now oh we'll look at it in the next investment committee in six months so but then you've just lost you know football you know forest the size of Wales so they really need to get on their horses and really get on board with us I'm just gonna say many right it's like I'm getting tired of hearing the word framework let's build a framework so can we just do the work please yeah I was just gonna say reflecting as an intermediary knowing that knowing that you know intermediaries can be you know they're gatekeepers they also we also add cost add fees right every layer of intermediation that you add to the flow of capital adds costs however they we we appear to be a necessary evil in that again to refer back to the example or to this opportunity as Brett referred to the billions of dollars that could be or should be or will be flowing from federal government and with the intent of reaching disadvantaged communities if they don't just magically appear the dollars don't just kind of magically flow to the right place in the right project and or in the right way right there there needs to be that sort of work and that that legwork and then create those right pipelines the right channels to to community so yeah thanks in here hope you didn't feel picked on that I think we have a few more minutes before we transition to some question and answer from the audience so be thinking about your questions I want to ask just kind of thinking about the whole theme of this so cap and trust the word trust has been brought up so many times across this panel and we've touched on how trust can be built but I would love to yeah talk specifically about trust and each of you from the seat you know the rep what you're representing share you know a bit about what would build trust for you I think one of the things about designing the way that we we kind of catalyze that capital you know building trust is really about trying to make sure that it's it's appropriate and patient and has all the factors that are needed for us to be able to effectively explore what it can do you know and then that's the difference between you know mission aligned and what I would perceive as like traditional finance like you know if it's hanging over our head returns you know expected target all those things those are I mean of course we know that that's there's an expectation there but if that's where we start the conversation it really feels unaligned to like what we're trying to do so really building out like the infrastructure around how capital can work with a company like Navo power like where where we play like of course we want to be more fit and ready for commercial capital at some point we want to stand our own legs but to get there we kind of need that you know more understand you know more I guess I call empathetic you know scenarios so that one we can build the confidence in the organization but also to our constituents to the people that we are accountable to which is the communities we develop these projects that they can feel like there's there's value added in the money we're using one of the things that I really am trying to figure out is if we build these big infrastructure projects and we finance them the same way they've always been financed are we just setting the table for extractive capital you know that doesn't feel good to me so as we're building this we're also hoping to think more broadly about what's the next stage once we get through this gauntlet of learning how to use the early stage the initial investment how do we grow the relationship to do the next thing that we need to do which is create equity and ownership that's inclusive of our communities because that's going to help us sell our mission better and it's also going to make us or help us sleep better too when we think about you know the support system that we're building in bridging these networks I think that's a big factor in like saying like we don't just want you know a shove off the ledge and to learn to fly we want some guidance on you know how the institutions with the weight and the power that these these you know institutionalized foundations and things can do to set the table for how we interface with commercial capital we're trying to set a high bar for development and I hope that these foundations and groups I can be instead of high bar for how capital can play a role in projects like ours and much of the team's designing because that's ultimately the end is we're trying to rethink how finance works you know and to get out of that framework that that is what we've always been told is a limiting factor because if we keep down the same ruts that have failed all our predecessors and trying to address these challenges we're doomed to make the same you know mistakes and to have the same roadblocks that they did so we kind of have to explore a new way of doing this going forward and I want to hear um on this question um but if we can keep it fairly brief the remaining comments on this question um just to give space for the audience okay I mean for me you know if there is a problem in the world you give it an entrepreneur they will resolve it right look at the driverless car out there so they need to trust the entrepreneurs doing the business and there will be failures accountability sometimes it's mixed up with accountability I think I think we should have accountability I mean I am accountable to you know but there should be an element of trust I think why are we trying to do here what's the big picture and real impact investors should really start thinking like this that's kind of my consensus I think probably in initial conversations is being very clear about what you want from me why that benefits you how it benefits me what's the timeline and how much work am I expected to put in for how much money I think all of those things really help frame whether I want to move forward in a conversation and that's different from what may be my community to for me to build trust I might have to sit in a four to eight hour meeting before I have a conversation with them so it ranges across the board um I think in my experience in the Amazon since we have so many problems or have a lot of bad experiences with extractive companies there is an element of mistrust against organizations that come there in my community we didn't allow people to enter the community without official permission for many years after the company has had left because the company sent spies and people to study our behaviors so that they could so that they could proceed with their project so I think the transparency is key and and also showing that you support the self-determined priorities of that specific community which is different for for each community all right well in our in our final few minutes here yeah we have about 15 minutes before we're going to be wrapping up so I'd love if you have a question please raise your hand and a mic will be brought to you and or a card for you to fill out I have a question while we're waiting absolutely I guess we'll say for Emil's work but how many people invest internationally or have international investment right now hi good morning guys um Suzanne I think you're right on point my name is Melody Serna I actually do a lot of business and tribal consulting I do a lot of that grassroots get funders to our entrepreneurs and business and kind of navigate those relationships I just wanted to add a little bit about some intermediary kind of conversation while they work well in some spaces for some non-profits I think when we're looking at the larger impact investments we have to look at the harm that they cause as well it takes the responsibility off the non-indigenous funder you're asking native intermediaries to then you know if we're giving 10 million dollars to an intermediary they're taking 30% off the top for overhead and administrative costs now you've got seven million now you want them to do maybe a one-year grant or multi-year grant they got to get those to their organization and what you've created an Indian country which is that imperialistic framework that we're talking about is a crab and a bucket mentality and you're asking native people to judge other native people on their projects to fund them versus taking the responsibility to build the relationships with those communities and directly fund those communities and in their projects you know everything from you know Jeff said it earlier it was really great and it kind of stuck with me for a minute you know we talk about climate justice climate justice is native justice it's indigenous justice it has been since time memorial you know climate tech is native tech and so when we're not investing in indigenous places we have the highest rate of return as indigenous businesses it may take us a little bit longer but your rate of return and your ROI is huge when you invest in those relationships in native businesses so instead of saying I don't know where to start I don't know how to do it all you have to do is actually if you're in your community pick up a phone google we're everywhere we're online now we're you can't you can no longer plead ignorance as funders that come to these conferences year in year out this is my second year at SoCAP and guess what the fill-in profit numbers and the impact investment numbers have not changed they're not changing because if CEOs don't have a mindset that they want to invest in indigenous businesses because they feel we're high-risk communities they're not going to invest their money so I'm here to tell you that investing in us is literally huge for your money and it's lucrative and we are worth it so think about that when you're looking at giving indigenous people globally not just here in the United States money and stop putting that responsibility onto someone else and take that for yourself as an organization and funder thanks for sharing you just made me think of a few other things in the trust world is like if you know where Navajo is you've passed the first step that literally has happened someone had no idea where our work was taking place the second one I think in terms of longevity climate change also is what happens when a project is done what is the decommission process look like has the have the developers thought of that and I think historically a lot of negative consequences in our environment is because those questions have not been answered or there's no money set aside for that any other hands raised with questions up here at the front what though thank you for for all of you being here today and so I'm curious what role tribal government may play in this you know I'm just thinking like I work in media and a lot of our native media here in the so-called us is owned or funded or operated in some way by our tribal government so I'm just kind of curious like where where do they play a role in all of this or do they my experience is the reason we exist like you know to create an alternative to where those governments I mean a lot of the federal if you look at a lot of the federal funding that's put out there the support systems it only supports federal government so our tribal governments and as entrepreneurs we don't have access to that funding directly so there's kind of like a bit of a you know a challenge in working with those institutions because those governments also have enterprises that replicate what we do and at times they're protective of that so we um you know naval power what's interesting is we do work with a lot of governments you know we do work with a lot of tribal communities and their associated government entities but each one has a different level of sophistication and so some are very savvy and they know how to work a system some are so limited and strapped they're one person offices they cannot handle the priorities that we kind of bring to the table let alone manage a grant application manage you know grant administration or foundational I mean there there's limiting factors due to these those things were not created you know with the idea of being effective they were created as a necessity to do transactions for communities and so in our in our community like our the Navajo Nation it looks very robust and it has a lot of sophistication to it but it's really resource strapped and it's limited in its understanding of how it even functions because it's less than 50 years old so it doesn't have that institutional knowledge or experience to be able to enact all of its provisions we're trying to help inform those governments on how to be better and from the private sector we do play a role in trying to partner in these public private partnerships to be able to catalyze more opportunities through that but it is kind of difficult with all of bureaucratic you know limitations that governments can have yeah I think I would say it's a home run if you have the tribal leadership the local leadership the community members all supporting your project like that's the holy grail I would say I think groups like change labs if I'm not mistaken sorry if I'm saying this wrong but I think they're working with the tribal government to help build a fund to do work so I think those are places where there's a now more collaboration between entrepreneurship and tribal entities try to access money we from time to time have partnered with tribal local tribal leaders to do work I will say there are times where like we have to move fast and sometimes that's really challenging to get all of the your ducks in a row to be able to take advantage of that and I do think one of the unfortunate things I'm seeing and I'm hoping this is not true across the board but I feel like the tribal nations who have the money are getting the resources those that have are getting more those that do not are struggling and I feel like sometimes when we tell people like oh yeah we should go after the lowest hanging fruit which is tribes that already have money it's like no you need some of the tribes that need the support or as the other on the other end of the spectrum and so some people just want to move fast so they pick the tribes that have resources already and I don't love that about sometimes moving quickly but it's super hard to do work yeah thanks I think time for one more question and then I would like each panelist to have a moment to give a closing thought and statement for us all to leave with thank you so much for being here today and for your words and everything you've expressed and what you shared I've heard a lot about some of the barriers and even though our communities may be different I've often felt somatically it's like we're dealing with a global system and historical inequities of extraction exploitation so like I resonate and I've heard also pockets of success stories and what works we have so little time and for all of us who are operating this space if you could give like a summary of here are the like critical few not even success factors but there's something around positive events here the few that are really cutting a path positively in the midst of this you know bureaucratic historical stuff that's not working here are the few standouts from where I stand that are working because it might help a few of us to like okay I'm going to go here that might be a portal that might be a pathway is my question making sense I think so I believe the question is can each panelist speak to some stand out some success story but stand out project or entity project or entity or constellation of factors like if you really like for my organization and any organization that are like mine here are the three or four things or three or four entities that I would say you really need to pay attention to to be successful in this space yeah those kind of leading you know exam exemplary models to look to sure I think so it could be models or it could be funders or it could be collaborative or whatever so I'm a big fan as a alumni of change labs is a program that's based in Arizona but I think they're working more globally I love data women lead they're doing things and I think I see some of their people here and there's a lot of I think within that network there's sorry I want to say credit unions local indigenous leaders in banking and financial worlds who are coming together to think of really amazing things and I think I've heard also like a Wista's been great about education and us obviously I would say a factor like just thinking about what factors make like Devin successful for us like having champions within these lending and foundation institutions like you know like indeed has a wealth of really compassionate folks that that are able to kind of help us like guide what what it is we need to do to configure ourselves you know there's an understanding there that's led to a lot of what I would call place setting you know institutions that take that risk carry a lot of weight to bring in others so when they open that door when when we have friendly people in these places and there are a lot of champions I could think about in in our you know in our ecosystem who are friendly to the cause that's the first thing we need is someone warm and inviting to be able to just be able to understand where we're coming from so that we can build up our capacity to meet what it is they need in order to feel comfortable in investing the other part is you know for us being able to um you know kind of reverse engineer the outcome and working like I would call like white boarding through our scenario allows us to really think through all the different mechanisms that this world needs to function those two things have really been game changing for us because prior to that we would know we wouldn't know where to start or how to configure ourselves to be investable that information I don't know if it's really available out there but it's extremely valuable for organizations who are trying to solve ground level problems and design themselves to be attractive for investment but that's a big piece I can be really short yeah I um brief the um I think one organization that really deserves a shout out in terms of success stories is ndn fund which also happens to be in the old amina portfolio and ndn fund was created to support to provide capital to climate projects in native communities and again in the uh in the um spirit of the value of intermediaries right the work that they're doing the the projects that they're supporting the relationships the knowledge is not something that you know we could you know we could have done or right or anybody else could have done and they're a unique it's a unique strategy and that most cdfi's in this working in these communities are typically quite limited in the in the capital they can provide right they can often provide really like small consumer loans or small business loans that are important but are not able to provide this sort of next level funding for for these climate projects so is that part of indian collective is that one of the projects um I don't have an answer to the question um I'm still looking for the answer but in the shared prosperity project that I'm working on um we're speaking to indigenous peoples across the world um such as now hope power as well and we are trying to learn um based on the local experience um what are some best practices that companies indigenous communities banks investors and governments can um can implement or can do um but we we don't have the answer yet and one thing that we're seeing is that there are um indigenous community owned or led renewable energy projects in some countries such as in US, Canada, New Zealand um so we're trying to see what what are the learnings that we can um take and implement in other countries to ensure that that we learn from the challenges and risks and opportunities um so if any of you have any insights on this um yeah I would love to speak to you I'd love to hear from Panjani before we close um in our final minute here um and then but all these panelists I believe will be around here or step outside and you can um come with some questions so the closing thought maybe um for me you know I would say us uh but um I think there's different organization looking at blended finance so and I think blended finance is very very important that we bring it brings together different types of investors you know government, quangos, private investors, philanthropic investors and I think together if these we can make make these models work we can deploy a lot of capital and it will attract more entrepreneurs to the field and it will develop the ecosystem and I think I highly recommend that you know we push that more going forward