JEI Journeys are a series of Q&As with JEI Fellows about the paths they’ve taken to financial activism and what they’ve learned along the way. For this post, we interviewed Kim Pate, managing director of NDN Fund, the lending and investing arm of NDN Collective, about overcoming entrenched barriers to Indigenous prosperity and honoring community-driven solutions.
NDN Collective is is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, NDN Collective is creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.
JEI: How would you describe your community wealth building work?
KP: I help Indigenous peoples defend, develop, and decolonize their communities by increasing access to funds that can be used to fight resource extraction; build strong businesses, homes, and infrastructure; and restore culture. This work is focused in places that have been subject to colonization and therefore have experienced poverty for hundreds of years.
JEI: What are you doing that brings something new to the table in terms of community wealth building? What value are you seeing from that?
KP: In 2016, I joined the board of directors at Nimiipuu Community Development Fund, a Native community development financial institution serving the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho. Since then we’ve provided consumer and business loans to many Nez Perce tribal citizens. Through our lending, tribal citizens have built better credit, paid off predatory payday loans, and survived the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.
Businesses financed include a daycare center, a café, a smoke shop, and a tourism company. These businesses are creating jobs and prosperity for the reservation and bringing back the Main Street business sector that has been gone since most can remember. Even more than that, they’re inspiring our youth and giving them hope for brighter futures.
JEI: What advice do you have for leaders who want to support community wealth building?
KP: In many cases, there are ample opportunities available to both investors and lenders to be a good relative by listening, learning, growing, and challenging assumptions and processes that create barriers to Indigenous communities thriving on their own terms. It’s never too late to tackle what seem like deeply entrenched barriers to economic prosperity in Indigenous communities. But it takes a commitment to finding out what’s needed and what’s already working, and to really leaning into community-driven solutions that will make a difference.
JEI: Do you have any lessons to share about being an effective partner?
KP: From my experience as an Indigenous lender, we succeed when our loan relatives succeed and when we meet them where they are. Based on our knowledge of what’s needed—capital in the form of debt and equity, plus assistance with various elements of the project or business—we bring a cohesive set of strategies that we call braided capital. We may provide a loan accompanied by a grant and other resources that synergistically support the growth of the project or business throughout the life of the loan. I encourage other leaders to tap into what the need is for the people they serve and create a similarly tailored approach.
JEI: Can you tell me about a project or aspect of a project that you’re proud of? We’d love to hear a community success story.
KP: Miss Anne’s Maypop Herb Shop in New Orleans, owned and operated by a Lakota woman, has become a community resource for remedies, plant knowledge, healing, and social change by utilizing an ecological and economic sustainability model. During the pandemic, the team had to scale back operations due to the lack of travel and tourism, but NDN Fund’s loan allowed the shop to resume its pre-pandemic service levels, expand its online presence to serve a national market, and hire more medicine makers and herbalists.
We also provided power-building resources to Miss Anne’s Maypop Herb Shop, including hiring Nativ3 (an Indigenous team of creative experts) to develop a new website that brings to life a unique, one-of-a-kind, mobile-friendly experience encompassing access to products, education, and knowledge-sharing. On the back end, Miss Anne’s Maypop Herb Shop will be able to track how well the website is meeting the needs of the target audience so that there can be continuous improvement. We recently expanded this contract with Nativ3 to include social media marketing, another way to support the business’s growth and expansion.
In addition to all that, Miss Anne is positioning the shop to offer electricity through a solar generator in the case of climate events like Hurricane Katrina. Local residents will be able to go there for power and to receive alternative medicine as needed for themselves and their loved ones.
Kim Pate, NDN Fund Managing Director, is a descendant of the Eastern Band Cherokee and Mississippi Choctaw tribes. Pate leads the daily operation of the organization, supports communications and evaluation, and plays important strategic and communications roles within NDN Collective. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Stanford University and a Juris Doctorate from University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. Pate is admitted to practice in Nez Perce Tribal Court and California.
