From the get-go, MacKenzie Scott has included Indigenous communities in her plan to advance equity in the United States. Her first moves in the summer of 2020 included a handful of Native organizations that supported education, financial independence and other interests.
The latest tranche announced in March continued that thread, with more than 15 donations that support Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians — a third of which centered upon youth.
It’s one of the many ways Scott has been shaking up philanthropic norms. Despite backing from some heavy hitters like Open Society Foundations, philanthropic support for Native American causes is still far from the mainstream, with less than half a percent of grant dollars supporting communities that have been oppressed by centuries of federal policies and colonial practices.
Here’s a look at Scott and husband Dan Jewett’s giving for Indigenous people in the U.S., which runs the gamut from culture building to meeting the needs of the eldest and youngest members of Native communities across the country.
From the start
Scott’s first forays into funding during the summer of 2020 included a number of organizations that help Native Americans achieve equity.
The American Indian Graduate Center, and its scholars program AIGCS, is the largest provider of scholarships to Native people in the U.S., empowering students from more than 500 tribes over the course of five decades. The $20 million vote of confidence it received from Scott was the single largest donation ever received in the organization’s history.
Scott also directed $10 million to a Lever for Change Equality Can’t Wait grant contest she funded, alongside Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, to surface the best ideas to boost women’s power and influence in the U.S. within the next decade.
One of the four winners was The Future is Indigenous Womxn, a joint initiative of New Mexico Community Capital and Native Women Lead that makes catalytic investments in Native-women-owned businesses.
Scott also contributed to the Oweesta Corporation, which supports economic sovereignty by offering financial products and development services to Native communities and CDFIs. The group has deployed a combination of tools and training to teach its communities to treat loans as investments over two decades. Its current portfolio is valued at more than $31 million.
Another recipient, First Nations Development Institute, also works to improve the economic agency of Native Americans, this time at the policy level, through direct financial investment, technical support and advocacy. The organization’s work also includes calls for fair and accurate census counts and changing how Native people are represented in sports leagues.
Broader interests were supported through the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), currently the oldest and largest group representing the vested interests of American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments and communities. Other investments delivered less direct support, like Forward Together, which includes Strong Families New Mexico in its efforts to build an inclusive nation.
As Scott and Jewett’s portfolio grew, so did their investments in Indigenous communities, building on these initial tactics, and adding others.
Starting with youth
According to Native Americans in Philanthropy, Native youth are five times more likely to enter the criminal justice system than white youth, commit suicide at two and a half times the national average, and are overrepresented in the foster care system.
Supporting them seemed to be a deciding factor in Jewett and Scott’s investments in 62 Boys & Girls Clubs across the country, which shared a collective $256 million.
Beyond clubs in places with concentrated Native communities like Texas and Oklahoma, where a club in one county reported a $2.5 million gift from Scott, eight chapters specifically engage tribal youth.
Two are in Minnesota: the White Earth Nation Boys & Girls Clubs in Ogema, and the Red Lake Nation Boys & Girls Clubs in Red Lake. One is in North Dakota: the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Three Affiliated Tribes — Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. Three are in the South: the Cherokee Youth Center and the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina Boys & Girls Clubs, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Another is in Florida: the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
On the West Coast, the pair supported the Antelope Valley Boys & Girls Clubs in Lancaster, California, home to a Native American community in the Mojave Desert that dates back 12,000 to 13,000 years.
Extending to education
Scott and Jewett’s support for youth also expands educational opportunities first seen with the graduate center investment.
Five tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) received direct funding in December of 2020 as part of Scott’s efforts to steady the ship during COVID. Navajo Technical University (NTU), with campuses in Arizona and New Mexico, received $12 million to advance a tribal responsibility that its president, Elmer J. Guy, said extends “far beyond the classroom.” The four others are Blackfeet Community College, Chief Dull Knife College, Salish Kootenai College, and Turtle Mountain Community College.
Later, Scott backed the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), an education and advocacy group, and the American Indian College Fund, which provides scholarship opportunities for American Indian and Alaska Native students. AICF’s work also received a boost of more than $5 million from the Bezos Family Foundation in the fall of 2021 for early childhood education.
Support for the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), a decades-long advocate for TCUs, came in June of 2021. With national college attainment hovering at 25% for Native American students, Carrie Billy (Diné), AIHEC’s president and CEO, called the gift “transformational,” something that “gives us sustenance and strength today, but it is a seed that will grow, thrive, and provide gifts for decades to come.”
Staying with elders
Scott and Jewett have also invested in elder members of Native communities, who are particularly vulnerable. Projected poverty rates for Native elders in 2030 stand at 10.9%, more than double the national average.
Along with other ways of addressing aging, they donated $4 million to National Indian Council on Aging (NICOA) which has worked for more than four decades to raise elder abuse awareness and reduce financial exploitation and healthcare disparities through education, awareness and prevention programs.
They also supported the Diverse Elders Coalition, which advocates for all racially and ethnically diverse elders, including American Indians, Alaska Natives and LGBT people. Coalition efforts are aimed at the policy level, with original analysis and resources geared toward educating policymakers and sparking wider conversations.
Tribal women
Scott and Jewett built on their support for Native women seen in the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge with a $5 million investment in the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC) in Lame Deer, Montana. The organization called the support for its work to end violence against Native women instrumental in moving forward. Rates are alarming. More than half of the women surveyed reported experiencing sexual violence, and the murder rate for Native women in the U.S. is more than 10 times the national average.
Building Indigenous culture
Scott and Jewett’s giving toward Indigenous culture and identity spans artistic expression and the continuation of traditional practices, grounded in their belief that arts and culture institutions can strengthen and transform communities through empathy, identity and economic mobility.
The “Seeding by Ceding” round of funding announced in June of 2021 included support for the First Peoples Fund, a national nonprofit that supports Native American, Hawaiian and Alaska Native cultural expression and sovereignty. The group promotes the “rightful place” of Native cultural practice and influence on America today, using levers like performance, workshops, film, and deep discussions led by Native artists, storytellers and tribal elders.
Upon receiving the support, First Peoples Fund President Lori Pourier, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, voiced appreciation for work guided by the belief that art and culture are essential to life, and said that both help “Native communities heal and thrive by deepening our collective connection.”
The same tranche supported the country’s only art museum focusing on modern Native art, the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, or MoCNA, in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico. Director Patsy Phillips called the unrestricted nature of their $3 million gift “really exceptional,” and a big boost for an organization that averaged donations in the $100,000 to $150,000 range. It built on a $5 million gift to the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) received in December of 2020.
Scott, Jewett and the team also supported the Alaska Native Heritage Center, in Anchorage, Alaska, an educational and cultural institution that shares the heritage of Alaska’s 11 major cultural groups, at a time when the lack of tourists due to COVID had set them back “about $1 million.”
Another “multimillion-dollar contribution” was made to the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, a Native-led organization that shares and preserves the arts and culture of American Native, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiians across America. The unrestricted support came as the organization is transitioning to a new national headquarters in Portland, Oregon, and creating a new local gathering place, the Center for Native Arts and Cultures.
In Honolulu, the P’AI Foundation also garnered funding to support and preserve native Hawaiian arts and cultural traditions for future generations.
Broader community advocacy
Other contributions support broad community advocacy and capacity-building, nationally and regionally.
Kawerak, situated in the Bering Strait region of Northwest Alaska that’s home to three culturally distinct groups of Alaska Native peoples — the Inupiag, the Central Yupik and the Siberian Yupoik — received $8 million in unrestricted support in March 2022. Funding will help the organization deliver employment and community services from wellness to emergency response and cultural development to the 20 tribal governments in the region.
In Hawaii, the Institute for Native Pacific Education and Culture, or INPEACE, received funding to further its mission to improve the quality of life for Native Hawaiians through a combination of education, equity, economics programming and relationship-building.
The Hawaii Community Foundation, an equity advocate for all Hawaiians for more than a century, received $10 million for its Hawai‘i Resilience Fund during COVID, then the largest contribution to its relief effort to date.
Another group working to build social agency is the Rapid City, South Dakota-based NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led organization that received support in June 2021. The movement-building and grantmaking entity was created to build Indigenous peoples, communities and nations’ collective power and inherent right to self-determination, while fostering a foundation of justice and equity for all.
A second South Dakota-based group, Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, takes a community-based approach to improving the lives of the Lakota Oyate people through approaches including food sovereignty, fair housing, language and education, and regenerative development.
More broadly, Scott and Jewett also supported the National Urban Indian Family Coalition, a national advocate for American Indians living in urban settings, and a voice for sustaining Indigenous values and culture.
For relationship-building, Native Americans in Philanthropy also received a “multimillion dollar” unrestricted donation in June of 2021, which it said will support “a growing network of Indigenous leadership in the philanthropic sector,” and build “deeper relationships between funders and the Native-led nonprofits serving the community.”
The couple’s last round of giving was wrapped in the message that helping any of us can help us all. Jewett and Scott have consistently included communities the First Peoples Fund calls “the People who came before We the People” in building a more just and equal America, and they continue to bet on their capacity to lift us all.