Published: March 25, 2020

Green Money Journal Indigenous Issues - March 15, 2020

Bringing together an esteemed roster of contributors from the areas of Native business and entrepreneurship, renewable resource development in Indian Country, and advocacy for Indigenous Peoples’ rights in business and policy, First Peoples Worldwide guest edited the March 2020 issues of Green Money Journal with Jan Bryan, co-chair of the Investors and Indigenous Peoples Working Group and Investment Advisor Representative of First Affirmative Financial Network, LLC
., in partnership with Green Money editor Cliff Feigenbaum.

The first issue, Indigenous People and Impact Investing, focuses on ways that tribal communities are leading as entrepreneurs in sustainable development. The second issue, Investing in Indigenous Communities, pivots to how investors can partner with Indigenous Peoples to achieve a more sustainable future. 

“I have never been more confident in our shared ability to piece together a more just world then when I consider the thought-leadership and team of people represented,” writes First Peoples Worldwide Director Carla Fredericks. “I am inspired by each contributor’s approach to creating a more inclusive and just transition for impact investment and a new energy economy in this post-DAPL era.”

Highlights and excerpts from First Peoples Worldwide’s contributions follow. For all articles visit greenmoney.com.   

Carla FredericksPartnering with Indigenous Peoples to Ensure a Just Transition

Fredericks reflects on progress made by Native resource developers, social investors and Indigenous business and economic advocates alike. “Our work has led us all to consider individually–and now collectively–the frameworks and practices necessary to implement a just transition with and for Indigenous Peoples,” she writes. 

Just transition, in its widest definition, encompasses all the complex interactions between individuals and communities, between local and trans-global economies, and between consumptive approaches to natural resources and long-term sustainability… The ideas behind just transition of creating inclusive economies that simultaneously value social, economic and cultural wellbeing, and of creating viable vehicles for investment in Indigenous communities are a central part of these discussions.”

Fredericks sees just transition as a continuation of the work that First Peoples founder Rebecca Adamson developed beginning in the 1980s, when “mainstream investing principles were too narrow to encompass Indigenous values.”

She [Rebecca] redefined capital as inclusive of natural resources and community, and she empowered individuals as shareholders within their own community ecosystems. Then, Rebecca brought those definitions to boardrooms as fundamental design principles upon which investors could deploy meaningful impact investment consonant with the expertise and rights of Indigenous Peoples.

One of the ways First Peoples continues to innovate its approach to indigenizing corporate values and integrating Indigenous worldviews into mainstream investing practices is through ongoing development of the First Peoples Private Equity Fund. The Fund was conceived based on the common “experience [of] watching deals made between Indigenous Peoples and outside entities where too few of the benefits inured to the Indigenous Peoples whose resources formed the core of the investment.” Fredericks writes: 

Our goal is to create a new pathway for investments that is Indigenous-driven from beginning to end. In short, we seek to harness the strengths of private equity to amplify Indigenous self-determination, produce financial success, and forward renewable energy.

Kate FinnRecalibrating Risk Assessment for Indigenous Women

“As we craft a new lens toward affecting a just transition for all, investors have an opportunity to recalibrate these tools to more aptly account for Indigenous women’s economic and social wellbeing,” writes Kate Finn, Staff Attorney at First Peoples Worldwide.

Finn emphasizes the need for social risk assessment to better account for Indigenous women’s economic and social wellbeing, especially because commonly-used assessment tools lack understanding of Indigenous women’s lives and experiences. 

The increase of violence and human trafficking [in Indian Country] attendant to development is particularly devastating because it contributes to the cumulative impact of violence in a community. It brings more violence, it brings more trauma, and, at the end of the day, Indigenous women are in their home left to sift through those impacts, often with little economic resources gained from the development inflicted on their community… Investors focused on implementing just transition must not only seek to do no harm by evading extractive industry development near Indigenous communities, but must seek out opportunities to do better by Indigenous women and children to harness their strengths in the short- and long-term.

 “Investors have a critical role in either endorsing or dispelling this reality for Indigenous women and children,” she writes. In terms of energy development, Finn points out a crucial and often overlooked consideration in transition from fossil fuel industry projects to renewables:  

...investors must not assume that renewable energy development will be necessarily different than fossil fuel industry development. It is entirely possible that green energy investment will proceed without the FPIC [free, prior and informed consent] of Indigenous leaders, or without consideration of the opportunities created or denied Indigenous women in the communities where the resources are located. In other words, renewable energy development could confirm expectations of violence. Again, recalibrating assessment to proactively consider Indigenous women’s needs and expertise will guard against repeating the extractive model of development.

Finn lists key considerations for transition into a new energy economy in Indian Country:

  • “Believing and then acting in accordance with Indigenous Peoples’ experiences and expertise as to their social and environmental resources…
  • “Back investments that are Indigenous-led or are driven by Indigenous leaders… [who are] in the best position to evaluate the ways that investment will affect the economic, social, and culture balance in those places…
  • “Proactively investing in Indigenous and women-led opportunities… [thus] multiplying opportunities for economic empowerment and leadership for all Native women.”

Bernadette DemientieffGreenMoney Talks Podcast: Bernadette Demientieff

Fredericks talks with Bernadette Demientieff, Executive Director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee about drilling and climate threats to the sacred, life-sustaining lands of the Arctic Refuge, and the Steering Committee’s successful advocacy work with the financial industry, investors and shareholders. 

With 14 communities of 8,000 total living about eight miles above the Arctic Circle, Gwich’in lands were protected until the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which for the first time opened the area to oil and gas development. The Gwich’in depend on caribou herds, which migrate in the region for their food supply and provide grounding for their culture, spirituality, and way of life. Warming temperatures from climate change and social and environmental violence from the fossil fuel industry are compounding threats to the caribou and the Gwich’in people.

Demientieff and the Steering Committee having been working alongside U.S. congressional leaders to regain protections for the Arctic Refuge. They have also worked within United Nations processes  to address and rectify international human rights violations. They have increasingly worked with investors, shareholders and financial institutions to help them understand how funding extractive industry projects and projects that don’t acknowledge and alleviate climate crisis endanger the Gwich’in people, Indigenous Peoples throughout the world, and in fact all life on this planet.

“Our way of life is important, and our identity is not up for negotiation,” Demientieff tells Fredericks. “I respect everybody's ways of life as long as it doesn’t negatively impact my life or my people's ability to live off the lands that have sustained us for thousands of years.” She tells investors and leaders of financial institutions that she is not an environmentalist or an activist, but rather the fight came to her door.

I just remind them that we have no other planet to pick up and go off to. We have to take care of the one that we have... If they put money forth [on projects that do harm], then they are just as responsible and just as much to blame for the destruction that is going to happen… One thing we have to do is come together. Climate change does not care what color we are – does not care if we are old, white, rich or poor. We are all going to be impacted. Right now in Alaska we are living it. We are at ground zero, and I know that there are many other places that are ground zeroes. So I just remind them that we have to come together and there’s no time to waste. We have to do it now if we love our children.

The Gwich’in Steering Committee’s work has recently found success as financial institutions have begun to alter their behavior to acknowledge this reality. In February 2020, JP Morgan Chase, America’s largest bank prohibited funding drilling projects in the Arctic Refuge, one of a growing list of major international financial institutions to do so. 

There is much further to go to fully protect the Gwich’in and the Arctic Refuge, but these first steps demonstrate a way forward for investors and the financial industry to ensure their business does not negatively impact Indigenous Peoples.  

Dave Archambault IIGreenMoney Talks Podcast: Dave Archambault II

Fredericks also speaks with Dave Archambault II, former chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Senior Fellow at First Peoples, about business development in his tribe, and his experience as a tribal leader during Standing Rock’s opposition to construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which brought Indigenous rights and the reality of economic conditions in Indian Country to greater public consciousness.

Archambault touches on the many intersectional aspects of economic development on reservations – law, policy, socio-economic conditions, culture – and the need to find opportunity in Indian Country beyond existing systems, such as oil and fossil fuel development. “What I'm starting to see and what I’m starting to realize is that there is a lot of opportunity if we look for it,” he says.

While there is some capital available for startup projects during the initial buildout phase, there is often a gap in access to funding to fully build-out new economic development initiatives. “There’s a lot of opportunity for different organizations to help tribes fulfill that financial or capital need and be prosperous,” he says. 

Archambault champions prospects for renewable energy, whether solar, wind, or geothermal:

What I like about renewable energy infrastructure development is that if a tribe is interested and willing to do [the work], then they know how best to treat the land… They are conscious of the environment, they are conscious of human rights, and they are conscious of what we are going to be leaving behind for those that are not yet born. 

When partnering with Native communities, Archambault says one of the most important things to do  is “not to push something on the tribe, but to allow the tribe the freedom, flexibility and liberty to say this is what we want to do, and this is how… Tribal communities, tribal leaders, tribal developers are conscious of what can be done right.”

Social Cost and Material Loss DAPL Case Study Fact SheetDriving Capital from a Foundation of Indigenous Values

First Peoples advocates for a process that elevates Indigenous perspective and values, as to social and cultural impacts during investment. In addition to a range of helpful tools that drive social and financial returns, “from positive and negative screens; ratings metrics; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indices, to industry associations that pool ideas and experiences,” SRI and impact investors should also develop and incorporate new tools “that focus directly on the risks of development on Indigenous territories and the potential rewards of meaningful partnership with Indigenous Peoples.”

One such tool, First Peoples’ Free, Prior and Informed Consent Due Diligence Questionnaire is a rights-based set of considerations specific to working with Indigenous leaders in Indigenous territories. It expands routine social risk assessment to provide a more comprehensive picture of potential and actual social impacts of particular projects and integrates respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights throughout project timelines. 

When measuring the “S” in ESG, understanding the full extent of social impacts during and after project development is a consistent challenge for investors. First Peoples created an innovative template for this type of measurement in its influential 2018 case study Social Cost and Material Loss: The Dakota Access Pipeline. Using publically available data on stock performance, divestments and other economic factors, the study found that it cost DAPL’s parent company and its financiers upwards of $12 billion on what was estimated to be a $3.8 billion project.

The financial losses strongly correlated with the social conflict are largely consequences of failing to account for the social risks of development, including a failure to respect human rights. The failure stemmed, in part, from a lack of adequate due diligence at the outset of the project. While the bare minimum standards of due diligence within the domestic legal and regulatory regime were completed, the scope of the process was far too narrow to assess the true nature of the opposition as to the social, environmental, and cultural impacts of the pipeline on and near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s territories.

“As the case study highlights, the controversy surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline showcased for generations to come the need for companies, financial institutions, and investors to respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples,” writes Fredericks.

FURTHER READING: 

GreenMoney Interviews: Jason Campbell on Nation Building through SRI and Renewable Energy Development for the Spokane Tribe of Indians
Jason Campbell, Sovereign Power; interviewed by Jan Bryan, First Affirmative Financial Network, and co-chair IIPWG

Investing with Tribal Partners to Create a Climate Safe World
Dan Chu, Sierra Club Foundation

At the Forefront of Economic Development in Indian Country
Chris James, American Indian Enterprise Development

Solving the SRI Puzzle
Becky Albert-Breed, First Nations Community Financial

Oneida Nation: Rebuilding and Refining our SRI Practices
By Keith Doxtator, Oneida Nation

How Native Entrepreneurs are Tapping into the Grand Canyon Tourism Economy
Jessica Stago, Change Labs

Reconciliation and the Role of the Indigenous Economy
Mark Sevestre, NATOA, and Katie Wheatley, SHARE/RRII

Green Money Journal is an award-winning e-journal that has published news and information about sustainable business and impact investing since 1992.