Emily Race-Newmark: [00:00:00] Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

Today's conversation with Vanessa Roanhorse is looking at economy through the lens of the indigenous worldview, leaving us with some bigger questions around the purpose of money itself, how we might relate to it, and what becomes possible through rematriation which Vanessa will define for us in more detail in this interview.

We'll also cover some broader questions around what it means to be Indigenous, how we define home, and how Vanessa and her team, through the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship, testing out a thesis that when Indigenous women are given the decision making power around resources, their families, communities, and the land around them will thrive.

We'll start by grounding ourselves in an indigenous worldview with Vanessa, as it's from this lens, that her visions of possibility are [00:01:00] growing from.

Vanessa Roanhorse: What many indigenous scholars knew and had to learn how to articulate is that indigenous people fundamentally think very differently about their relationship to the world around them and the purpose of themselves to the relationship to the world around them.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Roanhorse:  What we've decided at Roanhorse Consulting because it resonated, is we've taken some of these pieces and have woven it into our body of work, but it is not definitive. A lot of these conversations are live conversations. They're living pieces. They're not like, "now that it is written, it is codified, ratified, we are done, this is now part of this historical documentation and process," that's not how this works. 

Partially because my work specifically sits around finance and capital, I present this concept of a worldview as a way to try to off-center the reasons we're talking about finance and capital and the purpose of it [00:02:00] with folks.

 As we say in Indian country, "we want to present in a good way to have people have open hearts and minds to come to this conversation." So we lean into Leanne Simpson, who is a renowned indigenous scholar, and she's a member of the Alderville First Nations and she's Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg. And as a scholar, she penned this concept of the seven principles of indigenous worldview. If it's okay, I would love to read it because I think everyone should spend some time finding Leanne Simpson's books.

Emily Race-Newmark: Please.

Vanessa Roanhorse: So the first principle is that knowledge is holistic, cyclic and dependent upon relationships and connections to living and non-living beings and entities.

Second, there are many truths, and these truths are dependent upon individual experiences. 

Third, everything is alive. 

Fourth, all things are equal. 

Fifth, the land is sacred. [00:03:00] 

Sixth, the relationship between people and the spiritual world is important. 

And seven, human beings are the least important in this world. 

And if we can start there when we talk about finance and capital, which is ultimately about power and tools and decisions, if we can remember this worldview, we might be able to have a meaningful conversation on what is the purpose of these tools. 

Emily Race-Newmark: You just heard from Vanessa Roanhorse, who joins us as the CEO and Portfolio Lead of Roanhorse Consulting.

She's also the co founder of Native Women Lead, a national organization that's investing in indigenous women in business. Vanessa is also the co builder of the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship, whose focus is to support more indigenous women in fund and asset management. It was truly an honor to hear Vanessa's perspective and the ways that she's currently planting [00:04:00] seeds for new economic paradigms for the generations to come.

We originally recorded this conversation together in August of 2023. I'll turn it back to Vanessa now to share a bit more about the journey that led her to rooting into the purpose she has today.

Vanessa Roanhorse: As a person, I've worn many hats most of my life. It really wasn't until I became a mother that the variety of things I love to do, and the things I like to participate in, have some clarity and focus and purpose. 

I was living in Chicago with my partner. We just had our son, who now is nine years old, is half Diné Navajo and half German, Irish, Midwest. 

And so I think around 10 months, he was born in the middle of one of the coldest winters I can remember in Chicago. It was like -40ºF in February when I had him.

We were coming into the holiday season and one of the reflections that the two of us had, my [00:05:00] partner and I, were just how difficult things can be trying to raise a small child not having a lot of family around. My partner's parents both passed, a couple years before, their sister lives in Wyoming.

And we just had a discussion on what it meant to call a place home, what is home. We also had a discussion on what it meant to be your whole self. And for me, your whole self as an indigenous person. 

I was grateful that we had this aha moment! Where it was like, we've been in Chicago fifteen years but what was clear was, it was time to return home. 

One, to try new things. Two, as a way to connect to my Diné community and heritage, and ensure that my son could do the same thing as he grew up. 

Side note to the story is, I went to boarding school on the east coast. I left home when I was about thirteen, and I'd never lived off the [00:06:00] reservation and I'd never been around so many non-indigenous people, particularly non Navajo people. 

What saved me was my deep connection to my culture and where I was from. I needed that to happen as well for our son.

So we moved back in 2015, and I thought I was gonna be able to find a job. I don't have a college degree and am art school dropout. For years I've been seeing that I'm a terrible student, but an excellent learner. And my way of learning is baptism by fire. 

It's upon returning back here and realizing that my diverse and strange resume really wasn't gonna get me a job that I wanted to do. The other is realizing that my way of learning is very indigenous, which is indigenous people learn by doing. 

Those two things resulted in me sleeping on my twin sister's floor. She welcomed us to her home. For six months, trying to find a job and unable to, I, through relationships, was able to get my first contract [00:07:00] and start Roanhorse Consulting, which is my company today.

I came up with the name thinking it was just a stopgap opportunity, because I was still under the impression that I had to work for someone. That's why the name is in my mind, very uninspired. Roanhorse Consulting, LLC does not illustrate the work we do today. But it was just something to get me to the real job.

I was still under the impression that systems of opportunity and agency had to be through other people's determination of your worth.

I didn't know what entrepreneurship was, and entrepreneurship wasn't something that even crossed my mind. And all of it to say is it culminated due to sleeping on the floor, burning through credit cards, a 15 month old. And the two of us just trying to figure out how do we make ends meet? 

So many people I know who started companies, it had nothing to do with this vision of entrepreneurship from a [00:08:00] Silicon Valley perspective. Entrepreneurship from this place of like, "I have a world changing idea." " I plan to build a company and exit." 

I started it as a "Holy crap. I have to figure out how to cover my bills."

 I had no expectation that we would be coming up to eight years.

I had no expectation that this journey would lead me to find other indigenous women who were trying to start businesses and do this work. Through that learning process of frustration, sometimes sadness and anger, we found joy and opportunity and we're able to vision a future, which is Native Women Lead. That through this journey, I would meet others who were like, "there is an alternative economy," there is another way to do this. 

Lastly, an opportunity for me to demonstrate through my Diné women ways as a matriarch, 'cause we are a matriarchal society, that when you do put women back at the center of decision making and power, it's [00:09:00] not to usurp, but it's to rebalance. 

My son was the reminder that everything we are doing, we hope that what we're building will support our children, their children, our grandchildren, into this future.

And that women and feminine ways of being have to be at the center if we're gonna actually dream beyond where we are today. And so all of that started with a baby. [Laughter]

Emily Race-Newmark: Wow. [Laughter] Thank you for sharing that. And I love hearing that the seed was with your son, but also you as a mother. And then this narrative that you are stringing around returning home. I think that's such a profound question and then path to answer. It might be an ongoing question to answer. [Laughter]

Vanessa Roanhorse: I have no assumption I'm going to answer it in any new time soon, but I will say that, what I am able to do is try and try and try again.

Emily Race-Newmark: How do [00:10:00] you define 'home' now with the wisdom that you've collected along the way? 

Vanessa Roanhorse: I think home is multiple things. As a indigenous person of the United States living on the lands that my people walked, I have a deep connection to home, which is, my belly button is buried under my parents' house on the reservation.

And that's something many communities do. So for me, I am spiritually tied to this place in so many ways, but home is also my ability to use my Navajo ways of being and my indigenous ways of being and thinking to support communities to go where they wanna go. 

The other place of home that I find is, in my family. And not just my family of blood, but my family of choice. I can be anywhere because my home and my culture is tethered to this Navajo way. And I love that because I think often with Native American people in the United [00:11:00] States, because of the history of genocide, displacement, assimilation, and then eventually termination and reservations and treaties—all broken by the way— we often are fighting for these pieces of land that were forced upon us, for the most part, to maintain our sovereignty. 

Those things are critical and important. I also believe that this worldview and this idea of place can be expansive the way it used to be for our ancestors.

Because if you look at the history, our ancestors had economies of scale. We were trading with people from the tops of Canada to the tips of South America. And the reality is we find home from multiple places. And I think that's an indigenous worldview and an opportunity for us to redefine home.

Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for that. And I also Just in painting the picture from an [00:12:00] indigenous—historical, indigenous—perspective that other forms of economies or of exchange have existed and have been successful. And perhaps the metrics of success look different than how capitalism defines success.

So I just really thought that was important to underline this isn't a new concept, but perhaps more of a remembering.

Vanessa Roanhorse: Yeah, for sure.  I think we live in this vision and this worldview which is like, everything has to be innovative. Everything has to be new. The old has to be gotten rid of so the young and the new can flourish. 

When reality is like, everything is cyclical, everything's holistic.

We live in cycles. So much of where I think a lot of folks are coming to is actually, historically, multiple indigenous worldviews. 

We've had this knowledge, and there are different cultures that have been continuing to steward this knowledge. And there are other cultures that may have lost this knowledge, but it's only a handful of generations lost, we can return to it. 

When I hear things like [00:13:00] 'circular economics', 'regenerative economics', 'restorative economics', those are all ways in which we're trying to reach back. I think those are important. However, I caution to leaning so far into academia versus trusting our hearts because our minds have been running the show for too long.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yes, yes. Thank you. 

For the number of times we talk about indigenous perspectives on this platform, we actually have never broken down, what does it mean to be indigenous?

I feel a tension coming up now where folks are like, well, is everyone indigenous somewhere? When we're talking about the work that you all are doing, how are you defining what it means to be indigenous? Who is that encompassing specifically? 

Vanessa Roanhorse: Yeah, it's a big topic and I've had a lot of conversations with different people about indigeneity, globally, indigeneity, North America, indigeneity United States. And again, it goes back to nuancing, context matters, as well as being able to hold the complexity that everyone does have an [00:14:00] opinion and an experience. And those things are valid. 

For me as a Diné person, a Navajo woman , from the United States who lives here on this territory, I always start from there. Indigenous, when we use it for the rematriating economies is at this point centering United States based with the hopes of expansion to Canada and Mexico and to the south of us.

However, we want to hold the fact that because of colonization it also means that we have been displaced intentionally.

 That displacement can look like direct genocide, boarding school, ICWA—which is the Indian Childcare Welfare Act where folks were literally stealing children from their homes to put them into foster care and adopting them out as a way to continue to "kill the Indian and save the man". 

So to me, indigenous also has to encompass a conversation [00:15:00] around belonging.

 Where does your indigeneity come from and does that community see you and name you as belonging to it? That's a more complex conversation. Because if we're talking about United States Indigenous, we were forced to have to use blood quantum as a definition for belonging or to being able to say, "I belong to this tribal nation."

Vanessa Roanhorse: Underneath that, there's federally recognized tribes and state recognized tribes, and then just non recognized tribes. And so at each tier there's different levels of requirements to be indigenous in the US. A lot of it has to do with access to resources. But underneath it all, it was a way to ensure that we began policing ourselves around indigenousness.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm.

Vanessa Roanhorse: I'm very careful and conscientious that I don't try to speak too far beyond [00:16:00] what I know because I can't fully articulate the experience of indigeneity in other parts of the world, globally. I can articulate it here from a place of being a federally recognized tribal member. I'm a citizen of the Navajo nation. But I can also articulate it from a place for the fact that as a federally recognized tribe, and as someone who has a certificate of Indian blood, regardless of how racist and messed up that is, I still have the privilege of identifying as indigenous without question.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm.

Vanessa Roanhorse: Other community members may not have that same privilege.

So other scholars are gonna have way better answers than I will have, but that's where I start with, it's not even a definition, it's a personal lived experience for me.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I think, more powerful than a definition in a dictionary or something you would find online. So I really appreciate you sharing that perspective and I think, yeah, there's a lot of uh, horror [00:17:00] trauma, in what you shared as well. So thank you for just bringing that to the light for a moment.

So of the immense, vast body of work that you've helped to birth or shepherd, or however you wanna describe it, there's a newer initiative, I'm understanding the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship, which I wanna spend some time talking about.

But first, this word 'rematriating'. Can we just double tap on that and have you break that down for us?

Vanessa Roanhorse: Yeah. First of all, try typing in 'rematriating', it wants you to put 'repatriating' that's just to give a level of how new and yet not new this word is.

In our current language systems, repatriation is the word that it wants to be, but what's emerging is rematriation.

 A definition that I've always appreciated, which is that rematriation is rebuilding your relationship with the world and Earth Mother around you. That is the whole purpose of rematriation, and I absolutely appreciate and support that. The other is, I [00:18:00] want to lean into this idea that rematriation has a plurality just like multiple ways to imagine.

So like in the indigenous worldview, everybody's individual experiences are valid.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Roanhorse: And how you approach this is valid. 

As we see incredible organizations working in rematriation spaces, I think of this Sogorea Te’ Land Trust team who's really doing that through literally taking the land back and bringing back ceremony, relationship and practices with the land that they're taking back for their community is a perfect, beautiful definition of rematriation.

 It is such a beautiful thing to watch them build and grow. And as we see more of these land back strategies coming together, it is definitely indigenous women and femme and non-binary and trans women who are at the front lines of this space, of this conversation. And so I think there is something about womanness [00:19:00] in all of its definitions which brings me to this idea that we've been thinking a lot about, which is how we need to bring women back into the balance of decision-making and power over resources.

Again, this is not a purpose of usurping men or the masculine. It's that we have to rebalance what's been lost. So for us, the rematriating economies came together as our way of saying, when we put women and particular indigenous women, we put them at the center in which they're able to be decision makers over resource, and in our case resource will be capital.

 That through that process, they can transform what it means for them to rematriate that capital. And if we think about the language that Edgar Villanueva named, which is that money is just a tool and it's about who wields that tool. When we think about indigenous women wielding that tool, I think there's an opportunity.

Emily Race-Newmark: [00:20:00] Yeah.

Vanessa Roanhorse: For the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship, we believe that by recentering of indigenous women as caretakers and leaders of economic systems that support their family, communities and tribes, it is the rebalancing of the feminine energy back into decision circles.

This is our approach to rebuilding and re-imagining a system through a matriarchal lens.

Emily Race-Newmark: It's so beautiful the work that you all are doing with this apprenticeship. I hope we can spend some time talking about what's emerging there. Yes.

Vanessa Roanhorse: The challenge that we're facing is that there's billions close to trillions of dollars moving to potential entrepreneurs and founders. And the reality of it is we're not seeing any of that money moving towards indigenous people or their founders.

If money is the tool or the instrument today for agency safety, access, power, then we know systemically that [00:21:00] money is not something that native and indigenous people have access to and/or have wielded.

If anything, it has been actively used to harm and traumatize us and keep us exactly where we are. So one, we need to get our hands on that money. Through our body of work at Roanhorse Consulting and Native Women Lead we're doing that by creating really different ways of developing funds and moving those funds to indigenous women founders.

We have multiple funds using what's called relationship-based lending. We have an entire underwriting platform that doesn't use the five Cs of credit, but uses what we call the five R's of rematriation which is a different way in which we identify the risk factor of these women and their enterprises.

But even in building those, we can't move enough money fast enough to get to where we need to go, which is more indigenous women in decision-making roles over capital. 'cause that's ultimately what we want. It goes back to our thesis around [00:22:00] when we recenter women and we rebalance women in those industries, but also around resources and we put that back in their hands, they will support themselves, their family, their communities, and the land around them. We just believe that's gonna be the ripple effect because that's naturally how they work. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Roanhorse: So we worked on the fund side. But the truth of it is, during the pandemic, when everybody was launching these new BIPOC funds, I had a number of phone calls in which folks were like, "Hey, we have this fund, but we don't know where the "I" is."

And it was very frustrating and eye-opening. The reason they're not finding the "I" is because the history of indigenous people has been so marginalized and misunderstood that folks oftentimes, didn't even know where to start. 

And so I was like, "Well, have you talked to people in your community? 'Cause I guaranteed there are native indigenous people in your community who are doing cool stuff." And it was this concept of [00:23:00] relationships.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Roanhorse: Relationships take time. You actually have to be intentional and willing to build relationships, which then open up the opportunity for trust. Which then open up the opportunity for partnership. But you have to start with relationships. And if you don't start from that place, transactional opportunities is how we got here. And if you're a native person, you know what a transactional opportunity looks like. 'Cause it was probably a treaty, it was probably something your ancestors were forced to sign and changed the world for the rest of the generations forward.

So it's just a very different way of engaging. 

The Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship really came out of conversations I had with my colleague and sister Jamie Gloshay, Native Women Lead, and then other colleagues of ours like Liz Gamboa, New Mexico Community Capital, where we were just like, "Yes, we need to create our own funds and our own underwriting platform so we can demonstrate how not risky this [00:24:00] group is." 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm-hmm. 

Vanessa Roanhorse: But we also have to get onto the other side, which is we need to be the check writers ourselves. We need to be working in the venture space, in the lending space, in the financial space. Because the only way we're gonna start to build meaningful relationships is we're gonna have to show people how this works. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Right.

Vanessa Roanhorse: And so the Rematriating Economies is one of the offerings that we've put into the universe, which is a five month apprenticeship, if we're able to place all ten indigenous women into a equity fund, primarily an impact investment fund, we will have tripled the number of indigenous women in the United States and Canada in venture.

Emily Race-Newmark: Whoa.

Vanessa Roanhorse: And that is how insane this is.

Emily Race-Newmark: What is possible for indigenous communities through an initiative like that? 

Vanessa Roanhorse: My first hope is that these women find a placement in which they can help support and direct the millions and millions, maybe billions of dollars these funds are sitting [00:25:00] on toward indigenous founders that are building incredible things. One of the direct things is to move from having 0.004% of all venture capital going to native founders actually get into the 1%...

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah.

Vanessa Roanhorse: ...could be really powerful. Because guaranteed, these founders would be able to scale and grow to then eventually take the profit and the wealth they've created.

I'm almost a hundred percent they would bring it right back to where they come from. I couldn't even imagine the things they would invest in that would be a direct and a much more immediate impact to people in communities. The other is that our young people would suddenly see themselves in these sectors.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah.

Vanessa Roanhorse: Historically on the number side, we don't see enough indigenous people working in the financial investment space. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. 

Vanessa Roanhorse: So ideally, this apprenticeship will help other young [00:26:00] indigenous people, and particularly young indigenous women, to be like, "I can do that. That is how I participate as an indigenous person in bringing this worldview and perspective to it." 

Emily Race-Newmark: Something also that's coming to mind is just the longevity of this effort. How do you approach that knowing that there's a longevity strategy?

Vanessa Roanhorse: Sometimes it's really hard because we have to build now and we are building with this generational perspective. I'm trying to balance the perspective of, the fruits of this labor will not come to fruition in my lifetime and more than likely my child's lifetime.

However, how can I still live generationally forward and yet, do the day-to-day work? And so much of that is because through culture, sisterhood, partnership, and ceremony allows me that freedom to dream the [00:27:00] future—and also trust that when we set things in a good way, we are also setting the young folks coming up behind us to continue to take that forward.

As long as we are living with those intentions and sometimes we fall off of our purpose. But as a Navajo person, you're supposed to wake up every day and be like, "Okay, I didn't achieve what I wanted. I didn't stay in a path that was what I wanted to do."

But you have every day a chance to get back on it. 

There's probably a million proverbs, but the one I think of, I think it's Buddhist, is like, "How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time?" 

It's this idea of acknowledging the broader thing and leaning into "What can I do today? As long as I'm teaching behind me, then everything I'm building becomes cyclical, becomes holistic."

That's how I'm approaching it. I'm not gonna lie, I do get frustrated. I do get [00:28:00] impatient. I want to live in the future where freedom, safety, liberation and joy isn't something we have to negotiate or code switch and sneak our way through to get it.

Emily Race-Newmark: Hmm. Thank you for that very human moment. And what I heard for myself in that is really the importance of, however you wanna call it, but I'll use the word 'community' here. When you talked about sisterhood and you talk about ceremony, there's like a connection to something bigger than yourself.

So let's hear about your vision and again, just remind us that this can be a space of anything's possible for a moment. What is your magic wand? How you'd like things to look in world? [Laughter]

Vanessa Roanhorse: We had a strategic plan for my company last week, and we had to draw if we are successful in everything we do, what does this world look like? My partner, we talk a lot about this concept of, what does a radical future look like, where people are liberated, they're free, they have agency. And that we all [00:29:00] have safety and opportunity? 

To get to this future where we aren't confined, our gender is not weaponized, our cultures are not weaponized, we have multitudes of definitions of commerce and capital—it's no longer just money and a number, but wealth looks like health. Wealth looks like a good home, access to good food, the ability to define family dynamics for whatever it is. We move away from the traditional binary marriage component, that people can live authentically across pluralities of experiences.

But the way to get to it is we're gonna have to truly find the ability and the pathway to break away from what no longer serves us. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. 

Vanessa Roanhorse: And in Navajo culture, we have a history of moving into new worlds. And every time we move into a new world, we [00:30:00] have to let go of the things that no longer serve us.

 I imagine as we have to emerge into this new world, things like four bedroom homes have to disappear. I imagine this idea that we're gonna have to let go that the world is our playpen, and this concept of tourism has to change. I think we're gonna have to let go of this idea that we get access to everything, and immediately.

And the only way that's gonna happen is through our young people and what we teach them. And so my magic wand is we create the space for those young people to dream.

We really have to create the space for these young people to dream. Because it's not gonna happen in my life or many of ours. But if we can create the space through rematriating economies, if we can create the space through these conversations around new types of underwriting, it opens a little bit more space for other folks to come in and dream bigger, and continue to build and open that up and bring our young [00:31:00] people with us right into the middle of this. 

Emily Race-Newmark: one thing that may arise for folks around that, it just depends on, again, maybe your worldview or your relationship to letting go of things. There can be a clinging on to or a fear. And even part, I would say, it's probably connected to the scarcity mindset that capitalism has infused...

Vanessa Roanhorse: Mm-hmm.

Emily Race-Newmark: ...into the collective.

So what would be your offering around a way to approach that letting go process in your vision? [ Laughter]

Vanessa Roanhorse: I think what I spend time on is really around the way we bring voices into existing institutions. Institutions who have existed for very long , need to start to figure out how they dismantle. And I say that because similar with capitalism, or colonization or any of the isms is that, you can't fix it. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. 

Vanessa Roanhorse: These are functioning, working things. People today need to think differently about the purpose of [00:32:00] institutions. They need to think differently about the purpose of education in this very linear process being the only pathway for success or to achieve.

 I think between those two fundamental things, other things can then start to grow and sprout and build. Folks who've had a lot of power for a really long time need to examine, why  them? How thdid they g there? They need to make the choice to be brave and step aside.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. Yeah. I'm just gonna link it back to what you were sharing or what we were discussing about earlier around expanding the view to that of many generations beyond oneself. Just thinking a little bit more collectively versus of yourself, [Laughter] the individual,which is an Laughter]

Vanessa Roanhorse: Totally, totally illusion.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. So because you really do play in this arena around economies and money, I would like to now dive deeper into that part of your vision, because you started to touch on it where our idea of what wealth looks like [00:33:00] might shift to be more encompassing of what true wealth could be.

Would there actually be a role for money? What would that role be? 

Vanessa Roanhorse: If we think about money more from a place of this should just help us to do this collective achievement, for this community to have X, Y, and Z. Then as a community, they can decide. 

I think a lot about other tribes who have community events where multiple times a year during harvest, during maybe the salmon season or buffalo season, they come together and they look at the things that are in excess and they distribute it equally amongst people.

They open it up to people who don't have those things. So that's the regenerativeness of an economy that could happen.  And honestly, who knows, maybe money becomes obsolete and different. Maybe what we start to value is storytelling and teaching, and we start to [00:34:00] value learning and value shared happiness and shared prosperity.

Maybe money doesn't have to be the thing, but at the same time, it'll always probably be here. I just hope it's not the only type of commerce we have.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yes. Yeah.

I'd love to just close with an action lens, if we could invite listeners to pause the podcast right now and take an immediate action, what would that be? 

Vanessa Roanhorse: I would find a local indigenous led organization that works in a place that speaks to your heart and donate to them or volunteer right away.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhmm. Vanessa, thank you so much for everything that you shared in this conversation. It was a wealth of knowledge and a lot for us to sit with and also act on. So I appreciate your time and all the work that you're doing in the world.

Thank you.

Vanessa Roanhorse: Thank you, Emily for having me.

Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for listening. We hope this left you with some new visions of possibility and actions you could take in your life.

If you want to stay connected with Vanessa, please visit her [00:35:00] at https://www.rematriatingeconomies.com/ or https://roanhorseconsulting.com/, where you can submit a contact form. 

Specifically, if you are managing a fund or working in investing or entrepreneurship, please reach out to Vanessa to see how you might be able to work together to move more capital into the hands of indigenous leaders and founders.

We've linked everything over at thisishowwecare.com in the show notes of this episode. While you're there, you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive prompts and practices from guests like Vanessa to support us in embodying a world of collective care.

If you think this episode will resonate with someone that you care about, please pass it on to them. In doing so, you're helping others to connect to the ideas that matter to them, as we practice, play, and embody a world of collective care. 

This episode was produced by me, Emily Race, co produced by Kimberly Anne, with final editing by Andrew Salamone, and music by Eric Weisberg.