 So thank you all for being with us on the Friday morning slot a tough one, especially in a very large room So but we're so happy to be all together and to have you with us. My name is Audrey Selyan with Artha Networks a group that's been working on enabling the The impact investment Ecosystem in different ways and trying to bring together various Communities that provide a deal flow and impact investors and our experience has been mostly in India I have the Pleasure to be with this incredible group of people this morning. We're so happy to see how the the theme of Indigenous communities and impact finance has emerged and Been elevated through the course of SOCAP this year and so this is sort of another for us a capstone session And an opportunity to share with you some of the thinking some of the more creative thinking around how impact finance and blended finance is being used creatively in the context of indigenous and indigenous native communities and With me today crystal Cornelius From a Wista Corporation Jeff Bowman from Bay Bank, which I just learned this morning is one of 17 native-owned banks in the US And Nick Tilson from Ndn. I'm gonna let you all do your Introductions because I will not do justice to you to your work Sufficiently and then I'd like to propose that we then just kind of dive in with one or two big questions about What you know, what we're seeing some of the more creative and some of the more salient Interventions that we're seeing in finance for your communities. So with that crystal Good morning, Nina Nishinabekwe. My name is Crystal Cornelius, and I'm executive director of First Nations A Wista Corporation. We are a national intermediary lender We're a certified native CDFI and we've been in this space for about 20 years. So really our organization Through the gamut of the CDFI industry per se has really helped propel the advent of Sound and prudent lending institutions on in tribal communities across the United States. We're a nationwide organization Work in the 50 States and also work within part of the 50 States, Alaska and Hawaii one thing that I think is really interesting about this panel per se and a lot of what I do and a lot of the lending that I do as an intermediary is to Relatively smaller loan funds So we would say between a million and five million in assets and working in persistent poverty counties very rural communities But in the scope of Indian country itself, and you look at the over 500 tribes We really have become sophisticated Financially within these systems. So one thing I really like about this panel and what we're going to be talking about Generally, I'm talking about the the need for capital within our rural communities Which is is there it's true and and we're a good bet and we can talk about statistics and loan Portfolio ratios and all of that good stuff in a moment But we also have in the form of true self-determination being we have this larger lack of capital access to grow Individual assets community assets within tribal nations communities and sovereign nations we're seeing within the the composure composition of this panel how incredibly Um Sophisticated tribes can be in figuring out how to serve their people in larger measures and really thinking of new mindsets Which align with cultural mores per se and capitalism and how we see these collective forms of capital Actually really working and being very healthy And I think we see this outside structure where a lot of people are trying to figure that out So the intersection between so cap and what we're doing on financial levels Within Indian country. It's really like a perfect marriage. I feel and we've been walking parallel For so long that I'm really excited to have this conversation and hopefully with the small group We can really get into Some deep dialogue on what questions may be perceptions may be opportunities and such so with that I'll turn that over to you Nick I'm a doc yopi Nick Tills and a machi up a Chantel Washington up a choose up a low Get you in my Lakota language this morning Thank you for being here and I want to first acknowledge this is the land of the aloney people and the ancestors of this territory for allowing us to be here I Come from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and that was a former executive director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation and I was honored enough to be part of a movement of young people on Pine Ridge reconnecting to culture and spirituality and identity through our ceremonies in our language and and that really Give us an increased sense of you know commitment to place and responsibility to tackling these problems in our community And so we created a pretty dynamic community development corporation and we You know set on a journey to build a 21st century indigenous community from scratch in the poorest place in America and We we didn't know anything about money or community development or loans or interest rates most of us had Predatory lent loans at the time with our cars and all these other things, but We we wanted to build community. We wanted to solve systemic problems in our community And so we we became developers we became community developers and 10 years later Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation employs 125 people We have over about 57 different philanthropic partners and we've leveraged about 75 million dollars of new investment into our community on Pine Ridge and begin to revolutionize our thinking And and and address systematic problems in our community and in the journey to and in the journey of doing that work Our work was uplifted throughout Indian country and sort of outside of Indian country too and And so we eventually were contacted by about 43 different tribes and 27 different native nonprofits comprised of over 70 different indigenous communities All over the hemisphere who were saying we want to do something similar to Thunder Valley in our communities, but But unique to our culture to our climate to our place and Thunder Valley didn't have the capacity to To really help them. So we just said come Not thinking that they actually would And about 37 tribes have visited Thunder Valley over the past few years and we've just been sharing what we're doing and so I guess like you know Probably about a year and a half ago. We went to the drawing table and said what what what what kind of system? What kind of system would it take to scale what we're doing at Thunder Valley because I kept Catching myself telling tribal leaders and communities Don't do what we did how we did it. It's madness and I wouldn't wish it on on anybody You know, we just got done raising $3.7 million for affordable housing project from 14 different sources And it's crazy, you know and so so the new organization that we're building that we'll talk about a little bit later is the Indian collective of reorganizing philanthropy and Basically building one of the you know building building the biggest intermediary grant making fund geared towards indigenous people in the history of philanthropy And we're the process of building that now and creating partnerships and we're building a national CDFI that can run side-by-side with it So that we can do blended capital solutions to lift up native communities So we'll talk a little bit more about that when we get into the The meat and potatoes I guess. All right. Thanks Good morning, Pozo, Bozhu, Seguli, Ho, Kolomose. That's how we say hi to each other in Wisconsin My name is Jeff Bowman. I'm from Bay Bank the United Nation is owns a community bank There's approximately 5,600 banks left in the country that our FDIC insured and only 18 of them are Native American owned so we Are in a very special class and there's about 150 minority owned institutions. So We Have a very targeted approach to affecting change in our community the bank was started by the tribe about 23 years ago and Initially went in the partnership with some private individuals and the nation they both put in half the money to start the bank and The nation was interested in starting the bank because their tribal members were using predatory lenders They weren't getting credit. They weren't getting mortgage loans And when you lend money for mortgage loans in a native community oftentimes the land is in trust And it makes it difficult to get a lien. So to an inexperienced inexperienced lender That's problematic to them. They don't know how to figure that out So one of the things that we specialize in is home ownership and just access to credit in general to the Olnita community The Olnita community is in Green Bay, Wisconsin The greatest football city here in the continent if you say what representing Green Bay The reservation is actually a combination of rural and urban and part of the reservation actually Overlaps into the city of Green Bay So the United Nations very enterprising besides gaming it owns hotels commercial real estate It has an engineering company and one of the reasons to get into the banking business was their tribal members Just couldn't get access to financial services. So we enjoy a very brisk business in our community We originate a lot of consumer loans and what it does shifts people out of using payday lenders and title lenders We also make a lot of small-dollar personal loans. That's a hard loan to get You know, you can get that loan at a payday store and pay 600% or you can come to the bank and and get a very fair rate And so we have 26 employees and nine of them are tribal members The board is elected by the the tribal council and four out of the five board members are tribal members So there's a direct accountability back to the relationship. I mean to the to the shareholder And so we enjoy Very good support from the tribe, but we operate on our own autonomously just like any other commercial bank So, you know, we have everything All the other banks have but what makes us unique is the target audience and so we serve our tribal members There's 11 tribes in Wisconsin six are Ojibwe and there's Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Stockbridge Oh nighta and so what we do is We have a lot of lending in our backyard, but then one of the things we've really Developed over the last few years is reaching out to the other tribal nations in Wisconsin To help them with projects It might be a construction loan on a like tech deal where the tax credits will come into the project later to help So that project doesn't have any debt, but the tribe may need a interim construction loan to create The build these new houses. So we figured out how to do pretty sophisticated stuff But be a small bank and so when you're I like to use the analogy and banking that we're a speedboat And a lot of these big banks are battleships, you know what a speedboat you can turn like this You can change your policy. You can change your focus really quickly, but for a really large organization It's really hard for them to you know to be agile So we we really enjoy this business and there's just a lot of work to do it in our in our communities Thank you so much for these introductions And I would I just wanted to say how much I appreciate, you know the opportunity to delve into Some of these some of your respective experiences. I think on some level we should I should probably refer to the title of our session and and just bear homage for one second to this sentiment that You know the deification the elevation of venture capital models Especially given where we see the city we're sitting in today. It's kind of an important an important Point to raise there are particular Value systems there are particular Aspects of one's appetite for risk. There's one. There's particular aspects about one's approach to time and and the definitions of patience that I think are just so important in The context of raising up the next generation of young social innovators and those who just want to make change the Community developers that the friends that I imagine you worked with for example, Nick Could you speak a little bit more about some of bearing that in mind some of the examples of How you're looking at blending different types of finance with a very different mindset to help Spur the kind of you know enterprising activity that you want to see in your communities Are there specific? examples That you could share with us I'll take that one Yeah, so in the building of in the building of Thunder Valley Even though we're doing all this Dynamic development work the whole project was about building up people and this is the most under-invested community in America with That has never had unemployment rates ever in the history of the organ of history of the reservation have never had unemployment Unemployment rates below 50% and Poverty poverty rate poverty hovers around 70% I mean this is a community who did not Participate our benefit from the industrial revolution And this is different. This is long. This is entrenched poverty, right? This is not post Cleveland post Detroit kind of poverty and so And so, you know in our work of building affordable housing and in creating doing job creation We basically created what we call an ecosystem of opportunity and this ecosystem of opportunity had to do with creating As a developer actually creating bringing infrastructure raw infrastructure into the community doing housing development a Workforce program and then we basically created a worker owned construction company and That and a workforce development program that ran side-by-side with it The workforce development program was funded by grants the administration for Native Americans and the Vakirovich Foundation and then our Then our a teacock a construction our worker owned construction company That's where we took on PRI PRI capital into that to launch that company and And and they're the ones that are building the whole community at Thunder Valley right now We were able to it was interesting because as a developer we became an anchor institution And so we leveraged the fact that we were a developer in an anchor institution to think about launching enterprises So that in the development work that we were doing we're actually being able to make sure that That development work was having impact in the community So then we so then like what I didn't anticipate was how how big Thunder Valley as an organization would grow And so all of a sudden we ended up at this challenge where challenge and opportunity where we had a hundred and twenty five employees and You know with a hundred and twenty five employees and in the middle of a place that has a housing crisis for an organization Who's trying to solve a housing crisis? I'm like if I don't build housing for my workers. I'm going to lose the workers and we're not gonna have impact and so So we so we launched on this you know endeavor to To build a affordable housing project for employees that were working for Thunder Valley, and of course we didn't have any equity And so we basically partnered we partnered we partnered with the Shakopee mid-walk it into a community Another another tribe in Minnesota and partnered with the Northwest area foundation They brought grant capital so the Shakopee invested about six hundred thousand dollars in a grant Northwest area foundation invested about four hundred thousand dollars in the grant And then we partnered with the we partnered with the South Dakota Housing Development Authority and took on about a one point a 1.5 million dollar Loan and built affordable housing for our employees there But it was through that partnership that they were understanding the Northwest area foundation in Shakopee were understanding They were doing two things by doing that they were bringing equity into the project so that we could actually be able to accomplish The the balance sheet of the of the of the project and be able to afford the loan But keep actually keep the rents down But they were also understanding that they were making an investment into strengthening our balance sheet so that we were able to Leverage other forms of capital as a part of the project. So there was like When you know when we were talking about impact and sort of their reason for making those kinds of investment There was I think ten different things, you know, there was worker, you know, you know housing for the workforce There was increasing the balance sheet There was all these different things that were all part of it and taking on long-term capital from South Dakota Housing Development Authority too so those are that's an example of how we use sort of blended capital and stretched out the patience and And brought in and get it away for investors to be involved in our work Let me take a stab at it. Yes. So, you know, we're using the conventional bank model Bank is just a financial intermediary, but I always tell people that banking is really easy We rent money we rent money from depositors. We pay them interest and we mark it up and we make a loan with it So you need to know the people that have the money you need to know the people that need the money, but We've figured out how to get become very efficient at using Standard kind of tools available that every bank and we've become experts in them for example Indian loan guarantee Indian loan guarantee is a loan guarantee program It's like the US Small Business Administration loan guarantee, but it's under the Department of the Interior And so we're closing a loan next week for a tribal project. This tribe is expanding their grocery store and It's about a three million dollar project. We're doing a two point seven million dollar loan that loan will have a 90% guarantee on it. So we're trying to use tools that are readily available that enhances the credit and it Mitigates our credit risk. It's a long-term loan. So this community has a nice grocery store They're gonna have a beautiful grocery store when this is done in this particular community has a lot of tourist attractions because of hunting lakes and Automobiling in the winter and stuff like that and they're not catering to the non-native crowd right now Their store from a aesthetic standpoint isn't the most appealing and but this is gonna be a beautiful modern grocery store So we're we were willing to step up and provide this loan get credit enhancement on it another example is we use a loan product called hud 184 and that is a mortgage loan that Contemplates taking a lien on a house on trust land So on many reservations the land is checkerboarded between fee land and trust land Some of the trust land might be in the tribe's name some of them might be individual trust where it's assigned to you So a conventional lender cannot take a lien on that land. It's held in trust They'll never have the land is collateral. So that's a turnoff, you know to some lenders They just look at that and say, you know Intellectually, I can't even wrap my head around that and if I'm only gonna make one or two loans I'm really not gonna put the time and effort into it, but this loan product contemplates that so that loan is 100% guaranteed principle and interest by By HUD government agency what that does for us is it provides liquidity Our bank is about a hundred million in assets and then we have another 80 million dollars of hud 184 loans that we've Originated and to provide we can't tie up all 80 million dollars of our cash into 30 year fixed rate loans We sell those loans and then we're allowed to retain the servicing of it and it can be used on fee land trust land So you take a hundred million dollars on our balance sheet and eighty million dollars in mortgages. We serve 100% of those Borrowers are Native American. So we're using pride, you know Trying true tested products, but just applying it to Indian country And it really gives us a competitive advantage because there's not a lot of banks that have built up that intellectual capital to figure out How do you use that and and we're really good at it? So, you know, we're we're using the traditional bank model But we're we're using some products that are off the shelf that are available to every bank We've just figured out how to become, you know, very efficient with them So, you know, what we need is deposits to keep growing the bank and to make loans, you know, we need money You know, we need to raise deposits. We're not doing a bond We're not using patient capital from a foundation, although they could become a depositor So I brought signature cards and a resolution with me if anybody wants to open an account You just make a check payable Bay Bank and we'll take care of that after the session as I briefly somewhat alluded to My organization First Nations of WESTA we are our Target market is native CDFIs we help fund and directly Invest into native CDFIs through the tenure of our history. We have helped build up the CDFRI industry per se from 2 to 77 today and about 30 more emerging Nick I'll be happy to say in a couple of years. We're not the only intermediary Nick will be an intermediary CDFI with his Indian collective models So I'd like to just give a brief little tidbit of history so I can talk about this momentum Endeavor that at least is pretty proud of that. We just put together recently So when you look at Indian country per se in each one of our individuals I believe on this panel is is really portraying in their own aspect how under leveraged Indian country is In regards to the native CDFI industry per se of our 77 CDFI's we First Nations WESTA also does quite a bit of data collection and and research We have net assets collectively Amongst our research Respondents, you know on average within the industry of 79 percent So we have so much more debt and investments that we can take on and keep a healthy financial position and what that really is showing is One a number two an appetite for lending within Indian country per se. Maybe that's for larger development Maybe that's in regards to building personal assets and community assets by ways of Helping build private sector economies home ownership And building up consumer credit within Indian country per se in looking at this So if we look at 20 years to where we are today another thing first Nations a WESTA has done is we have a Financial literacy curriculum. It's the widest use curriculum in Indian country. It's called building native communities financial skills for families We're now on our fifth edition and this is very important because our communities We look at at money. We look at transaction and we look at value in assets much differently So learning how to balance that with capitalism per se and having lived in cash economies for so long There really has been Wonderful growth and finding that balance respectively and what that means for each tribal community itself So they figure that out, but with the right tools and resources and capital to follow We've gotten to a point now Where in partnership with banks 18 native banks created throughout the industry CDFI is by and at large or non-depository institutions we're evolving loan funds. So when our Tribal members are ready to graduate out of our Organizations, which they hope they do and go into mainstream financial systems Where are they going to keep their money in a safe and affordable place? so the intricacies of all of the the forms of capital that we're seeing and the The growth of Indian country per se is is quite phenomenal in in that regard and stopping there Generally First Nations. We says the the first investor Of debt in the native CDFI's and there's a myriad of reasons for that It could be Indian country is deemed risky a lot of people who are interested in investing in one way or another With an Indian country simply don't know how or they don't have a connect so rather than going into Some of those barriers with that We have been a very successful lender for the past 20 years. We've revolved over 17 million dollars in Indian country 20 years lending we've had one loan default and it was $10,000. I made that loan knew it could be risky That was about six seven years ago, but that still equates to 00.01 percent and In reflection of that our native CDFI's portfolios are very very strong as well So with all of the success what we find as an intermediary We've got a very robust Portfolio loan portfolio with our native CDFI's as well as a very robust investment portfolio in order to Lend the funds but of our more tenured organizations That really have been embedded in their communities for the past 10 15 years They're still not able to garner the investments. They need to meet target market demand period So they're coming back to to a wester for money and based on our own Concentration levels because CDFI's and this isn't just the native industry at large the whole CDFI industry unless you're a bank or a credit Union and are unregulated institutions, so we are regulated by our loan policies and procedures With that quagmire per se I've got 10 15 native CDFI's and I've already got 800,000 out to you and based on your balance sheet in my Concentration, I really can't do anything for you And we don't have other people jumping in so what? Has transpired and this was an idea about two years ago And it wasn't a Wisto's brainchild by any means of the imagination a very Dedicated foundation to Indian country Northwest area foundation They have an eight-state region and they have dedicated 40% of their giving an assets to Indian country And a lot of their their states actually encompass quite a bit of tribes We hosted essentially a roundtable discussion with the finance leaders within Indian country and we're saying what can we do about this? Nobody's jumping in We need money our communities need this money for for growth and really building healthy economies within some of the most marginalized communities in the United States So we came up with the idea for a capital aggregate pool so with that The the communities and the the native CDFI's felt a Wisto was the vehicle in which to develop and monitor and Capitalized the pool so with that it was a two-year process and what we did first is we brought together a steering committee of native CDFI's So we could see what was their appetite What did they you know what would they looked like look what would they would like to look at in? Terms of policy in terms of time in terms of cost of the capital and then we started talking to potential investors and Partners to see what they would feel comfortable with so we came together with a very happy medium And what's interesting about this capital pool? So I'm happy to say We did put together the first of its kind 10 million dollar capital pool for Indian country We've deployed all of that money within the last three months But within this measure this is not something new in the finance world a lot of you are for those of you that work globally This happens all the time Capital pools and the strength collectively of organizations So this isn't you know as I indicated a brainchild of a Wisto or the CDFI's per se It's been done, but what's so phenomenal about this is? number Number one based on the rigorous financial underwriting we did on these organizations, which was a prerequisite of some of our funders which are banks and foundations and Private individuals and such normally and we do have a very rigorous underwriting criteria per se for our CDFI's But we did a full camel analysis on our pool participants Which is much different than looking at impact. It's it's it's purely finance driven for those of you that don't necessarily Lend we won't get into that. So initially we had 19 CDFI's apply for capital that were ready the terms or At least five hundred thousand you would have to take up to a million dollars ten year money That's a really big issue as well because for us. That's patient capital It is so incredibly hard for my organization to get anything longer than five years for investors So when we look at really making long-term systemic change a lot of organizations have access to ten ten year money Fifteen year money thirty year money. We are elated and over the moon about ten-year money With this and what's really nice about it as well as they had to show the demand obviously they're able to get this money out the door within a year and They still have a need for more capital. So With us and what's so innovative is that we finally I think we're coming to a really exciting trajectory within Indian country one of our biggest in my personal opinion obstacles really is invisibility and that's not the fault of of You know our potential partners or America at large because in all honesty unless you live in a Concentrated area where there happens to be native presence. There's so much going on in the world You don't really have to think about us and I'm not saying that in a rude manner But when we look at equity and we look at diversion and we look at inclusion and we look at all of these aspects that are Really at a forefront of America We as native people are still kind of standing here like we're still here You know what so so with this and this really does tie in I think just collectively to the pool With the success that we've shown by and large by ourselves through efforts of great partnerships and self-determination 18 native banks regenerative community models now being used and sought after all over Indian country creating capital pools with a myriad mixture of Financing and people belief in that we have so much more we can do and we have So much to teach I think in in another aspect as well with Outside partners just in how to make Capital work for good. That's not extractive within their policies to the community to the earth to The true the true nature of partnerships, and I think with I think collectively what do we have 60 70 years experience up here I don't know. That's kind of scary. We do though The more and more we can you know Uplift our visibility and our successes. I think the better it will be for humanity at large our people at large and Really trying to shift Capital in a measure that can work for good and it has and it can and I think we're somewhat proof of that on this panel today absolutely I mean the one thing that strikes me is that there's there's no doubt that there is an immense absorptive capacity within the community these communities for This type for it for the capital that we're here at Socap talking about and there've been ten Well, there've been I think this is the 11th Socap So it's been you know ten ten eleven years of the same discussion about how capital can be deployed for good and for In collective structures To be able to support some of the more the conscious aspects of Capitalism basically this is this is what the movement is all about. I just wonder and I'm conscious of the people in the room and What you all bring as well to this discussion? I'd ask that perhaps we together just pause for you know pause and reflect for a moment starting starting with with you All here, but I invite the audience as well to to ask questions or raise points We're here at Socap to really Enhance the visibility of this work and of the opportunity and I have a pretty good sense of The ecosystem infrastructure that that I've seen emerge in in in in India And and I've seen what that infrastructure has Attracted a high concentration of patient capital and in a willingness of some very large Foundations and private wealth holders high net worth individuals To think differently about how they're gonna deploy An allocate their money and it's not about finding unicorns. It's really not it's there's a whole zebra movement here And that's a whole other thing, but it's really about finding The enterprises and the entrepreneurs and the organizations that are really able to think about sort of cooperative and collective models So we're here. What's the moonshot? What's the ad mean next? We're gonna we're gonna come back and make sure You know in in in all of this audience and all the people who've come to all the many panels Related to these communities this year What's what's the ask? What do you envision? Happening over the next couple of years in terms of the movement and how it may benefit Your work and again I invite all of you to Raise your hands and also participate Yeah, I want to answer that one add to it a little bit. I mean like when we started thinking about impact like Indigenous communities are largely overlooked in the conversation And if you actually really think about it so 80% of the world's fossil fuels that are left are on indigenous people's land 90% of the world's biodiversity that is left is on indigenous people's land so all all Impact investors donors all kinds of folks that are trying to make an impact and fight climate change and all these things There's no way that they're going to do that without interacting with indigenous communities and indigenous people and That means indigenous people in communities in this hemisphere. Why why is it that? the biodiversity That's left on the planet is left with indigenous people and why the fossil fuels that are still left in the ground are on indigenous communities It's because indigenous people have been protecting them People have been fighting for them. So when we're talking about making investments into our communities Your strength your strengthening a broader movement to be able to fight some of the most important issues That is facing humanity today. It's not just about solving poverty on Pine Ridge or helping standing rock But we're talking about big huge global problems that indigenous people are at the cross intersection of and The fact that we have survived What this country has dished out to us the fact that native communities are the byproducts of a system that is broken In this country and if this movement is about fixing that system It needs us to do that and we need this movement to be able to save our communities and rebuild them And so, you know, we have to be thinking we have to be thinking big and we have to be thinking bold And that means people in this sector have to behave differently Less than point three percent of all philanthropy in America goes to native communities And it's on a 30% decline over the past 30 years over the past 10 years and So, you know like the work that we're doing with India with the Indian collective You know, we're trying to make the biggest power play move in the history of philanthropy to get philanthropy to behave differently So we want to create a fund that starts doing 50 million dollars of grant making to Indian country every single year Because that's what that's what that's what the need is There's about a need for somewhere between eight and ten billion dollars of capital in order to transform Indian country And so these are these are big questions and in the cross intersection of that It's solving places in this country where the porous Communities are where the most inequities that that's happening and also at the cross intersection of what climate justice looks like And arguably where the highest the most compelling impact metrics can be derived We spend lots and lots of hours talking about those metrics and how they may be found and measured and Yeah, there's a huge opportunity there Jeff, did you have thoughts? You know, we're gonna focus on the day-to-day Opportunities to provide access to capital you need capital to start a business. We want to support those nascent Indian-owned businesses But there's a lot of things that Are just real simple building blocks that we're gonna focus on every day One of the things that I'm most proud of is our consumer lending business We originate between five to six hundred consumer loans to our tribal members every year It's about three million dollars of annual volume and what's unique about the about the profile of the borrower About a year ago. I dissected the data because I was just curious. What's going on with their financial life? Half of the loans the people had credit scores less than six hundred You're not gonna get that loan if you don't get it from us, okay? And we're charging very fair rates and it sounds, you know, it makes the in that person's life It's it makes a world the difference to make them an eight or a ten thousand dollar loan to buy a car to get the work If you don't have a car reliable transportation, you cannot be successful Especially if you're in a rural community where you have to drive to work so, you know, if you have poor credit you can go to a Car dealership and use their high-risk funding and pay 36% or you can come to us and we'll charge 8% Okay, so it's very fair that there's another byproduct of that The other thing that I'm really proud of is the staff development when I arrived at the bank six years ago We had one tribal employee today. We have nine So we're building up the capacity of the business so that we have Native people learning how to become bankers Okay, so that's another impact like if your economic development work your economic development work Not only are we affecting change with the customers that we touch, but we're building up our staff so that we can Participate and do the exact same things Bank of America is doing or what that banker learned at Citibank We're doing the exact same thing So I think that's you know, we're gonna keep working on that this one last thing If you look at my profile sheet on this app I loaded a document a fact sheet on the bank if you want to learn more about the bank Just find my name on the app and you can you can see the some more information about the bank Fantastic I'll make my closing Short I'd really like to hear from the audience and this is going to sound a little vague Maybe some data tied in but my moonshot honestly is for our people to have enough and We're not we're not adding enough and I think collectively and with cultural more is native people our people are not greedy people In essence when you really look at what is held up is in true and honorable that person that Keeps to himself or hordes to himself has the least respect in the tribe So we're really looking at it a hundred and eighty degree turn around but Treasury Department of Treasury CDFI fund put out a study They put out several studies in regards to the industry at well, and they do quite a bit of data collection and research on native communities and it showed that Collectively Indian country has a seventy seven billion dollar capital gap And if we know this is what scary if we had that 77 billion dollars right now on what was needed for infrastructure for loans for everything that That money can do it would still take us 40 years to catch up to the poorest in mainstream America That's four decades. So my moonshot is Getting there Working myself out of a job where there's no need for a Wista there's no need for an intermediary because we have a financial system and structure that's participatory through all different financing agents and Getting to a point in the end where there's still a narrative on reservations, and it breaks my heart, and I'm from the reservation That you need to get an education and you need to leave home because there's no opportunities for you back home We need our kids home We need we need people coming to our communities to rule communities because of the the life and and the breadth of what we have to offer and I think that there's such a void in Humanity at this juncture that's looking for that connection for that community We have what you're looking for in that regard and in in order to just somewhat spread that message or Really social social justice I I would like to see capital and social justice aligned not only for our people But what we're doing for the globe And nationally because we're really at a trying point. If we don't start looking right now at what we do seven generations ahead I fear for my my grandchildren will never meet and I think we all should so the time for change really is now Thank you so much I'm getting strong signals from the back that unfortunately we don't have time for for the questions from the audience but I would encourage you please to come forward and and just you know, please Ask directly we'll have the opportunity hopefully to continue this conversation in other forums And another and as many of the other conferences and convenings as the ecosystem Brings together and so thank you all for being with us this morning and thank you to this esteemed panel for the opportunity to learn