Description

First Nations Development Institute (FNDI) seeks to strengthen Native American communities by investing in innovative approaches to economic development, health and nutrition, youth empowerment, and institutional revitalization. Founded in 1980, FNDI has disbursed nearly $29 million to indigenous organizations across the US. It has received and managed grants from the US Departments of Justice, Agriculture, and Interior as well as the Ford, Gates, Robert Wood Johnson, and Kresge Foundations, among many others.
 
FNDI has long recognized that the success of its work and that of its partners depends upon the knowledge and creativity of Native communities. It has invested enormous resources in the products of that creativity—the organizations and programs that are strengthening Indian communities. But it has focused less energy on understanding and fostering the individuals and networks in which knowledge and creativity reside.
 
The leadership of FNDI see that these knowledge producers—intellectuals based in the communities they serve—are essential contributors to the project of tribal development. FNDI proposes to work with four organizational partners in four different Indian communities to study the role of intellectuals in those communities and to understand how they can be better supported and integrated more effectively into the work of social, economic, and political advancement.
 
The four partners, which are themselves diverse in mission and organizational form, include: Salish Kootenai College, a tribal college in Montana; the Leadership Institute of the Santa Fe Indian School, which serves the Pueblo communities of New Mexico; the Hopi Foundation in Arizona which supports and incubates social and cultural innovation on that reservation; and the Piegan Institute, a language and cultural preservation initiative on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.
 
Each partner will undertake a unique project that reflects the particular character and needs of the partner organization and the community it serves. Salish Kootenai College, for instance, will convene academics, elected tribal leaders, and elders and youth to understand why those groups of thinkers and leaders don’t engage more regularly and effectively with one another for the benefit of the tribe. The Hopi Foundation will take a different approach: it plans to gather a range of intellectual leaders—working in different fields from different generations—to try to define what an intellectual is and what constitutes intellectual work in the Hopi cultural context.
 
The four partners, in addition to pursuing their own projects, will also meet together twice as a group to share learning and, FNDI hopes, to stimulate a broader conversation in Indian Country about creativity and knowledge production. At the conclusion of the project, FNDI will issue a report that will summarize the lessons learned and future needs. FNDI’s reports are well-respected and widely read.
 
The Luce Foundation’s grant would be used to support the projects of the four partners, the two convenings, and FNDI’s management of the overall initiative.
 
Recommendation:              That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a two-year grant of $240,000 to FNDI to support a project to foster community-based intellectuals in American Indian communities.
Approved by Board: November 2, 2017