Funding Rural | Episode #4 | Season 2: Find the Folks Moving Mountains with Casey Pearlman
Less than 1% of national philanthropic dollars go to Indigenous communities, programs and projects in the United States. How can philanthropy show up for these communities in a manner that is meaningful, lasting, and respectful? Casey Pearlman, the new executive director of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians – Economic Development Corporation, shares her experience making connections with Tribal leaders, and offers advice on honoring cultural protocols and leveraging more philanthropic tools in Native spaces.
“I don’t know if you can build liberation with the tools of your oppressor.” —Casey Pearlman
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More about Casey Pearlman
Casey Pearlman, Inupiaq and mixed settler descent, is the Executive Director of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians Economic Development Corporation (ATNI-EDC). She is an alum of the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship, the Treasurer of the board for Underscore Native News, and a board member-at-large for the Center for Inclusive Entrepreneurship and the Oregon Innovation Foundation. She graduated from Portland State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in both Business Management and Human Resource Management. She identifies as an ‘entrepreneur enthusiast’ and is thrilled to serve Native businesses and support their growth. She has worked in various industries such as cleantech, venture capital, cannabis, biopesticides, food & beverage, social entrepreneurship, mental health and more. Her decade+ of experience working with diverse founders and funders in emerging industries inspires her to build new paths of economic development in Indian Country.
“You have Tribes looking at their relationship to their local utility, and how they can play a bigger part in that. Since it’s often-times Native waterways that are being used as electric sources, or Native lands, I think that’s my biggest dream: I’d love to see more Tribes becoming leaders and selling becoming the utility back to the community.” —Casey Pearlman
Discussion Questions
- How does your organization work with Indigenous communities, programs and projects? What are other ‘tools in the toolkit’ that your organization has deployed to support projects? What are things you’d like to try?
- Do you have systems in place that could be perceived as a barrier to working with Tribal programs? (ie: short timelines, extensive applications, etc). What would it take to adjust some of those systems?
- How has your organization began to build a better understanding of how to work directly with Tribal Nations?
Resources
- Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians Economic Development Corporation — Casey Pearlman Bio
- Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship — Casey Pearlman feature
- Elevating Indigenous Voices | The Roundhouse Foundation
- NW Native Economic Summit and Fashion Show | October 16-18th | Portland, OR
NW Native Economic Summit and Fashion Show | Happening October 16-18th, 2024 in Portland, OR
“It can be quite an obstacle, just getting to the right person, but there’s always somebody in there that’s just moving mountains. They’re the person that you’re trying to get a hold of, but they are the busiest person.” —Casey Pearlman
Transcript: Episode 4| Season 2: Find the Folks Moving Mountains with Casey Pearlman
Erin Borla: 00:00
I’m Erin Borla with the Roundhouse foundation in Sisters, Oregon. We all love our comfort zones. It’s great to show up at a conference where you know a bunch of the folks there or have traveled with them in professional circles for a while, but it’s not until we get out of our comfort zones that we truly grow that’s certainly true for philanthropy. At Roundhouse, we’ve worked hard to build relationships with Indigenous communities in our region, and it hasn’t always been easy. I know I’ve fumbled around plenty, but I think it’s important that more of us in philanthropy get uncomfortable and get out more and try to get better connected with Native causes and projects. There are so many misconceptions, and with that comes amazing opportunity and potential for growth. Just point 4% of philanthropic dollars go to Indigenous communities, programs and projects in the United States. Just point 4% I was so excited to have Casey Perlman join me for a conversation for this season of the show. She’s the new executive director of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. Economic Development Corporation ATNI has existed for more than 70 years with a membership of 57 Tribes across Oregon, Washington and Idaho. More recently, the ATNI Economic Development Corporation has been making huge strides. Casey is relatively new to her role, and has quickly worked to help expand programming and outreach, strengthening economic connections and opportunities for more than 80 Indigenous nations all across the West. Casey’s mother is Inupiat, but she was not raised in that culture.
Casey Pearlman:
I identify as Inupiaq, but I also identify as a reconnecting Native. I’m someone who is raised outside of my family and my culture, and, you know, there’s that kind of internal motivation to reconnect with something and to kind of just weave together all these different pieces of it. And so you can kind of start seeing that, and some of the initiatives that are coming out of ATNI EDC with, with look not at any particular one of the member Tribal communities, but kind of looking at, how do we how do we look at just what already exists across these places, and how can we support, how can we augment? And so we’ve had a lot of success with State Small Business Credit Initiative, which now in this iteration, this is the first time that Tribes are a part of this. It started 10 years ago during the ‘07, ‘08 recession. It was just rolled out to states, and hence, even in the name Yeah. And so now here in reaction to, I guess, the guess we could call it a recession that we’re in, no one else seems to be saying it. And I’ll say it in response to the covid 19 recession, they decided to say and Tribes there’s we could spend the rest of this podcast talking about how states and Tribes are not the same thing, right? And so even in just the engagement of Tribes, it really came down to organizations like mine that already had relationships with them to really get the message to them. One of my first tasks that I did coming on to the organization was to call all of the Tribes and just to tell them that this opportunity existed for them. Oh, yeah. And so just calling random Tribal headquarter phone numbers until I found the right person to talk to, leaving a lot of voicemails, and then it was kind of like, huh, maybe there’s a different role we can play in this. And so we, we decided we’re already a regional CDFI, why not roll out our services as an administrator for this program? Oh, wow. And that’s kind of how the program began, was us just saying, like, okay, everyone’s kind of coming back to us saying they don’t have capacity to jump into this. Let’s, let’s do it ourselves. And with that, we have now grown it to be the largest Tribal consortium to ever participate voluntarily in this program together. The only consortium that’s bigger is the state of Alaska’s all being managed by the SBDC network up there. So you have this group of Tribes across the Western US that are voluntarily saying, let’s come together and take this opportunity to leverage it collectively.
Erin Borla:
Incredible. And I think I want to touch on you mentioned that you called all the different Tribes that you work with, and you just you called the HQ number, and you waited till you found the right person. And I think sometimes that can be as we talk about trying to build relationships where somebody can stop right like I don’t just don’t know who to talk to. How do I find the right person? So talk about what that looks like for you, and what would be good advice for folks that are interested in doing that work?
Casey Pearlman
Yeah, it could be a full time role just to keep that Rolodex up to date. Yeah, it can be quite an obstacle, is just getting to the right person. But there’s always, there’s always somebody in there that’s just moving mountains. They’re the person that you’re trying to get a hold of, but they are the busiest person. Unfortunately, they’ve probably, similar to myself, I guess, probably been punished for their good work, and now they have a director title
But you have to try it, and sometimes it’s calling and calling and calling and just saying, Oh, I think it’s this person. I think it’s that person. Sometimes it’s doing a little bit of research and kind of knowing what the structure is of the organization, or the Tribes, the nation, the office that you’re calling and kind of understanding kind of what the order of operations is as it were, and sometimes it’s showing up. Sometimes it’s just getting in your car, driving down to the office building, and just kind of hanging around and starting to talk to people. So you can kind of understand Who are we talking to? Why is it hard to get a hold of them? You can usually see it just like how busy they are running around. And that’s another thing that we do is, when we’re setting up a new lending product with the Tribal nation, we show up and we talk to these people in person, because you just can’t build that kind of relationship virtually as much as it’s a lovely tool, but it doesn’t really do it’s helpful, same, yeah, helpful, but yeah, it doesn’t quite especially When you’re talking about assessing kind of the economic status of a Tribes that’s really tied to their relationship with their land, that’s really tied to the relationship that they’ve had with the neighboring communities, and the biggest gift that they can give us that supports our work is to show us yeah and take us around having Tracy Kennedy show me around the Burns Paiute reservation, that was priceless, yeah.
Erin Borla:
What’s interesting is, I think, you know, a show about philanthropy, which a lot of people think is just typically a grant, right? And even philanthropists are like, Oh, well, we just cut grants. That’s what we do. And there’s this whole other pool of funds. And we talk in a variety of other ways about work beyond the check, but I think there’s this opportunity with endowment and other other support systems that we have through philanthropy, through mission related investing and program related investing, to be able to support programs. And I want to, I want to dig into that a little bit, but I think maybe we should start by talking about sort of what the economic base in Tribal sovereign nations look like. And it’s, I’m going to attempt it, and then you’re going to correct me. So I’m sure, but what I had understood in the past, and from what I’ve been told, is in a non Indigenous, non reservation community, we would see like 80% private business, 20% public workforce, and then on the reservation community, that tends to be flipped, where it’s 80% public workforce, or working directly for the Tribes and 20% private enterprise. Is that correct? Ish,
Casey Pearlman:
I think that’s pretty good ballpark. It really varies. I’ve seen extremities on either side of that, where some of the Tribes we work with, on the extreme side don’t have really any there’s no like enterprises. There’s no business dealings that the Tribes holds itself, and so they look at private business as the economic driver of their communities. On the very other extreme side of that, I’ve worked with the Tribes that has prohibited any business dealings on reservation unless you are an employee of an enterprise, which is very extreme, yeah, I think the more sustainable option is somewhere more in between those two. And so part of part of the work is also just kind of like, yeah, what is that spread? What is that mix? But certainly, yeah, I think, I think you’re 80/20, more skewed towards working for the Tribes. Is pretty accurate for most of the communities around here. Yeah. Well, and there’s this misconception that Tribes have casinos, so therefore all of their needs are being met with income from the casino. Yeah, it just, it doesn’t. It doesn’t work like that. And then really, what are the job opportunities within a casino? There’s not a lot of growth opportunity for the majority of the employees there. And so as far as, like, sustainable growth that’s actually matching inflation, matching economic realities beyond the reservation, it just doesn’t compete. And then not every Tribes is a gaming Tribes that I work with. And so you also have those dynamics of the gaming Tribes even looked at internally within Native organization, or a Native Tribes to Native Tribes would just be like, it’s great for them, not great for them. It doesn’t really equitably distribute wealth. And innovation is the key to success in imagining new ways of doing business that are reflective of culture, that could even revitalize outside of these kind of outwardly prescribed methods of economic empowerment. I don’t know if you can build Liberation with the tools of your oppressor.
Erin Borla 10:11
That’s a very powerful statement,
Casey Pearlman 10:14
And it is, you know, it’s a tool, yeah. And so I think, I think the conversation that a lot of folks we work with is, how do we build our own resource bases? How do we build sustainable options for economic growth with the tools that we have right now? And we’re kind of in this cool Nexus space where there’s a lot of funding coming in for small business, specifically in Native communities, myself being maybe the tip of the arrow for some of the largest dollars coming in. You also have a lot of money coming in for greenhouse gas production and the electrification and all these cool funds that are kind of stacking up. You have Tribes kind of looking at their relationship to their local utility, and how they can play a bigger part in that. Since it’s oftentimes Native waterways that are being used as electric sources, or Native lands, I think that’s my biggest dream. I’d love to see more Tribes becoming leaders and selling becoming the utility back to the community, and there’s some models of that, and I think we’ll continue to see that, but I’m excited about the work that we’re doing with the little tiny bit, the people that don’t even view themselves as business owners, the people who their community don’t even view them as business owners. And when I ask them, what, who’s doing business. Tell me about the kind of people in your community that are entrepreneurs. Oh, I don’t have, we don’t have any who’s making your regalia and cutting your hair and selling jewelry, who’s who’s doing Oh, well, we have a lot of those. We have a lot of those. Well, let me talk to them. And a lot of them are struggling because of the nature of being on their reservation and not you know, you’re right. You have your regular clientele base, but you’re talking about a lot of family. You’re talking about friends who who are like, Oh, of course, she just does that all the time to legitimize that as an economic activity, right, as a business, huge, mind blowing. And so that’s really been the thought with Jacob Wallace from Nick Yawei community of financial services. He’s their business services manager. Him and I put together the Northwest Native fashion show, not just because we love it and it’s fun and it’s fabulous, but because it’s an economic development platform, oftentimes one of the biggest detriments to these small businesses that are struggling to find a footing in their reservation based geography. It’s because they don’t have the access to the market. They can’t get there sometimes even e commerce is limited, just with broadband being of limited supply in a lot of these places. And so one of the things that we’re really putting a lot of effort behind is bridging that creating retail opportunities outside of the reservation in the more urban centers, to provide this necessary connectivity that’s really going to help small businesses Native, small businesses, get out there and be more visible in a space where they’re made invisible.
Erin Borla
Well, and I think that’s how you and I crossed paths. Was at EDC last year, but and I had worked with Jacob before, and the fashion show is incredible. Like, talk a little bit more about not only giving exposure to Native artists and regalia makers to be on the stage and show their work, but to then have access to the market and recognize that their product that they’ve been told for so long, it’s like, oh, yeah, I just do this thing. Actually has this real opportunity to level up their life right as far as wealth building and innovation.
Casey Pearlman
Yeah. The fashion show is something that it was always designed to be more than just a fashion show, because these are business owners that we have relationship with as Native CDFIs. And Native CDFIs are very innovative in how we work with our– you don’t even call them clients anymore. We’re calling them lone relatives because literally, we’re talking about our cousins, aunties, uncles. We’re talking about people who know where we live. There’s accountability there. There’s accountability built into the system. There’s relationship, yeah, already there.
Erin Borla 14:44
We should pause. What’s a CDFI in case folks don’t know.
Casey Pearlman 14:46
Okay, it’s community development, financial institution, which I know I tried to say it at the beginning, it did. But like, what? So it’s not a bank, it’s not a bank, sort of a bank, but not a bank. It’s someone that can provide financial services that are more adaptive to the needs of whatever community they serve. In the case of our community, we’re talking about services that can, we can do lending products with clients who have limited credit history, maybe no credit history, maybe has never had a bank account. And so our organization or a community development financial institution that can do loans to Native American small businesses as well as Tribally owned enterprises. Excellent. I would say, for folks that are looking for the grassroots connectivity, your local Native CDFI is going to already hold a lot of those relationships. They’re going to be pretty sensitive to what the local population is really, what direction they’re moving, and some of the needs of their small businesses, because they probably already work with them. And, you know, looking for something, for someone specifically. And sometimes that’s what it is. You’re talking about small, often impoverished communities, where people know every know each other. And, yeah, you get these exciting opportunities to throw your weight behind someone that’s that’s moving, and it’s like, yeah, let’s, let’s get the momentum going. So the Northwest Native fashion show, yeah, brainchild between myself and Jacob Wallace, but it turned into a whole study in just like market access, and realizing that, yeah, the the fashion show, in and of itself, what a great opportunity to have someone, have a bunch of people come in, get excited about these designers. We had pretty much every look that walked down the fashion show. So that night we were people were running backstage. This year, I think we’re gonna have an auction component, because it was little, yes, little bit of a mad rush at the end. Oh, my. But now we’re looking at, not only do we have retail space that we rotate between all the designers in Pendleton, what does that look like to get them here in Portland, to have a retail presence here, and to just let them know that there’s more, there’s another level that they can go besides just creating enough pieces and having a successful show, why not capture that momentum into an E commerce platform, into more retail space, into relationships with suppliers? Have the Tribes think about becoming a supplier of raw material in and of itself? There’s a lot of systems level thinking that’s going into this next iteration of the fashion show. And it connects all parts. It connects Tribal enterprises. It connects the relationship to the land itself. Yeah, it’s really, I think, bringing in the creatives into the discussion about economy building, which, which I think, has been lacking.
Erin Borla
How do we talk about some of these things that are incredibly innovative, but maybe flying slightly under the radar, not as much anymore. I will say the fashion show is getting some great press. But how do we find programs like that? Or how, how can, how can philanthropists identify ways to reach out and build connection to support some of those new, innovative things.
Casey Pearlman
Yeah. I guess my advice off the top is create a relationship with your local Native CDFI. If you don’t know who your local Native CDFI is, try a regional entity like Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, Economic Development Corporation. That was excellent. We’ll put the URL on the website. After edc.com we can start steering you to the right way. I think a lot of folks are looking for that one stop shop of, how do I get involved in Indian Country? Who can I drop the money with a regional CDFI? Can do that, but you lose out on, I think, the relationship, you lose out on the chance to deepen the impact and the reciprocal nature of the gift that you’re giving by not kind of going through a process that can be frustrating to build those initial relationships. Yeah, I can relate. I’ve called the phone trees, I’ve gotten a response. I totally understand that. But then you look at organizations like mine, and we can, we can help with that. We can kind of bring people to the table, since we already walking across both of those worlds. But it is, the key is really showing up. Go to your local conferences. Come to the ATNI ADC summit in Portland.
This might be airing after that, right?
Erin Borla 19:25
Well, we’ll definitely put information about ATNI ADC on the show notes, for sure, and I, but I think that’s those are great things, right? Especially as we have this conversation about rural places and Indigenous places, we hear that, oh, well, you should find the connector. You should find the intermediary. You should find, if you don’t, if you’re not in that region, you should find the person that or the organization that is in that region, and sometimes in Indian Country, that’s the Native CDFI, yeah, so I think that’s great, yeah.
Casey Pearlman 19:52
And I mean, I do it too, yeah? I lovingly call them my my local champions, the nice folks that you know you i. Seem to really pick up where you’re going, pick up the mission. Understand the opportunity, and can help get people to the table like nurture those relationships. They are worth their weight in gold. Anytime you go by that part of the world, hit them up. Look up the local like salmon fakes. Look at, look at the celebratory events as much as the informational events. Going to experience the actual culture itself, even as a guest, even if you’re not, if you don’t have those connections, just to be able to understand a little bit more of the protocols. I mean myself, like I shared, I’m a reconnecting Native. Even if I was raised in my culture, it’s still going to be a world apart from the Indigenous communities cultures down here. Yeah. So I’m a guest here, and so showing up and acting as a good guest, letting people kind of understand like that, you understand, yeah, building from a place of mutual respect. And of course, like deferring to their cultural knowledge when they’re telling you about their community, just lists being a good listener. And sometimes that means waiting a while till the right time, till they’re ready to tell you, yeah. And that doesn’t happen right off the bat. I think that urgency is, unfortunately, a symptom of of something a little darker. And oftentimes it’s, it’s misunderstood on both sides of the fence. I think, I think the mainstream is looking at urgency as this driving need to get stuff done, whereas, you know, brown folks have have had that weaponized against them, and a lot has been extracted from them due to that that need to industrialize to get it done, to do all these things. And so the hesitancy can be kind of a accountability tool, or just like a vetting tool, just like, Is this for real? If, if you’d been hit up again and again, all right, come and come and sign this and everything’s gonna be great and never worked out for you. You’re gonna really try to sniff out the deal the next time something like that comes around. And so that, that hesitancy, that kind of like running through a much more complex and interconnected decision making mainframe that is culture, and that is an act of preservation, and being sensitive to those protocols is a way to ensure that you are getting into the right relationship with these communities, rather than one that’s built on extraction or short term, temporary goals,
Erin Borla 22:43
Transactional.
Casey Pearlman 22:44
Transactional, yeah. But, I mean, yeah, I guess it’s just kind of really understanding the space that you’re taking up, the space that you’re making for others in that conversation. And it should be a conversation if you’re coming in there with a one sided dialog. You’re coming in there to pitch your product, your service, what you can do for this community that’s that’s great. Could have been an email if you’re going to show up, ask the questions, understand what the needs are, and then maybe tailor your pitch to those needs, rather than just come in with your your standard deck.
Erin Borla 23:22
Yeah, what’s the what’s your favorite part of your job?
Casey Pearlman 23:27
Every part, my favorite part of the job is really how much I’m learning. It never stops learning. I feel like I’ve worked in a lot of my my work history’s been I love jumping into emerging industries. I love learning new things. As soon as I feel like I can kind of put it on cruise control, that’s when I start looking for another job, like when I get bored there. I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen nice. I don’t think there’s ever, there’s no one in Native CDFIs that ever feels like I’ve caught up on my work. That doesn’t happen. You just get through some things, you can move on to the next thing. This is endless. It’s immense work. And I think the challenge of that is it might not even be something that benefits me in my lifetime. It probably wont, it’s probably too late for me. But the but the thought of contributing my labor to something that’s bigger than me, that is rooted in traditional knowledge, that serves a group of people that have been marginalized but have made a stand to reclaim and take up space, occupy space, to support them is the greatest joy.
Erin Borla
Well, and on that note, it’s been lovely to have you. I’m so thrilled that you’re in the role that you are in. It’s so exciting. I’m just thrilled to be able to work with you in a variety of different ways, and I can’t wait for the fashion show. Thank you.
Casey Pearlman 24:59
Can’t wait to have you, a VIP.
Erin Borla 25:04
Thanks so much for being here.
Casey Pearlman
Thank you.
Erin Borla 25:21
As philanthropists, we have so many additional tools in the toolkit than just our grant making. So working with CDFIs around program related investing or mission related investing, making sure the endowment aligns with our grant making and our mission, we have all sorts of great information about our impact investing on the Roundhouse website. Take a look at that. If you have questions, we can certainly try and connect you. We are definitely not the expert, as we are relatively new in this work, but it’s definitely a great thing to consider and think about, and it’s important to plug in with those CDFIs, especially if you’re stepping into a community that maybe you haven’t worked with before. They’re the folks on the ground, as Casey mentioned, they know what’s up. They know who’s there. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel building relationship with every single person you can start in one of those spaces, and whether that’s a CDFI or an intermediary, it’s an opportunity for you to get to know what’s happening on the ground in those places that you want to work in. I think the other piece I really want to touch on is is, how do we not necessarily tailor our pitch, like she mentioned? Right? It’s this opportunity to similar to business, right? You tailor your message as you’re communicating with different groups and different folks to make sure you’re aligning with what their thoughts are and their needs are. But also, not everything works for everybody, so maybe your grant process doesn’t necessarily work with what that particular organization needs, and how do we build relationships with other funders and other philanthropists to be able to connect them with somebody that is in their wheelhouse? So hey, it’s being okay saying no or saying hey, that’s not going to work for what we’re trying to do. But here’s another organization that I’d love to connect you with or maybe there’s a piece of that project that you’re working on that we’ll be able to fund, but there’s another, another organization that can take on this larger piece or building those relationships and being that connector. Head over to FundingRural.org for show notes. We’re definitely going to put some information in there about ATNI EDC, as well as the upcoming fashion show, we’re hopeful You all can check it out. Thanks so much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
