Building Indigenous Abundance: Key Impacts & Insights From the First Year of the Collective Abundance Fund

“Building wealth is about creating a life of abundance – not only with money but abundance of love, connection, prayer, and generosity”  – Collective Abundance year 1 awardee

In 2023, NDN Collective launched an innovative and ambitious fund, called the Collective Abundance Fund, to support the rebuilding of generational wealth while addressing the racial wealth gap among Indigenous individuals and families. The racial wealth gap refers to the persistent disparity in wealth between Indigenous People and non-Indigenous communities. We named this program the Collective Abundance Fund because we recognize that wealth for Indigenous People has always been about more than just monetary wealth. Part of this work is defining a life of abundance on our own terms as Indigenous Peoples, emphasizing quality of life, community well-being, relationships, and a spirit of generosity. The Collective Abundance Fund award offers an opportunity to challenge the colonial thinking that created exploitative economic systems impacting our people and communities.

Indigenous wealth is a quality of life and mindset that encircles family and community well-being and the care of relationships (self, family, extended family, community, land, environment), and a spirit of generosity. Money is a tool to support basic needs and bring financial security and self-determination so that one can live a “good life,” abundant in social and cultural sharing. – NDN Collective Abundance Fund definition of wealth

The Collective Abundance Fund was developed with monetary support from the Bush Foundation. We award either $25,000 or $50,000 to Indigenous individuals and families residing in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. 

Applicants must submit a plan detailing how they will use this award to support specific wealth-building goals in their lives. These goals could include anything from homeownership, furthering education, creating a reliable livelihood, or supporting cultural traditions. The original award period was for one year, though several awardees requested extensions to complete their wealth-building goals.

If accepted, the awardees attend five virtual Power Building sessions. These sessions centered around the Trauma of Money training in addition to technical support for awardees. This training takes a trauma-sensitive approach to money and examines how scarcity and past trauma dynamics operate within the dominant economic system. It helps individuals understand how these factors influence their relationship to money and shape their financial behaviors.

“Due to colonization, land theft, and systemic barriers, Indigenous People have been excluded from wealth-building opportunities for decades. With trust-based philanthropy, awardees have been able to purchase homes, pay off debt, start businesses, and attend college—all of which contribute to economic sovereignty,” said Sharon Pazi Zea, Senior Program Officer for the Collective Abundance Fund. 

It is clear from the stories shared with us by awardees that the Collective Abundance Fund facilitated many meaningful experiences for awardees and their families. While some findings shared below may be predictable, other emergent impacts demonstrate the importance of this work. They show the power of honoring Indigenous self-determination at an individual level and how these individual dreams can ripple out to positively impact their community. 

Year One Awardees

The Collective Abundance Fund was launched in early 2023, and we distributed 200 awards from October 2023 to 2024. The amount awarded in the first year totaled $7.9 million, with 84 awards of $25,000 and 116 awards of $50,000. The largest number of awards went to families residing in South Dakota, with 128 awardees, followed by Minnesota and North Dakota.

Awardees in the first year of the Collective Abundance Fund included a diverse group of Indigenous relatives. About half of the awardees chose to share information about their identity with us, since sharing demographic information was optional for awardees. Among those that shared, we know that year one awardees included Indigenous People who identify as elders, two-spirit, gender-diverse, and Afro-Indigenous or Black-Indigenous 

Awardees could choose as many wealth-building goals as they saw fit, and most awardees selected more than one wealth-building goal for the award period. The most popular wealth-building goal was education, with about 73% of awardees selecting it. This was followed by reliable livelihood, and then homeownership and household stability. A full breakdown of wealth-building goals selected by awardees is shown below. 

WEALTH-BUILDING GOAL	EXAMPLES OF ACTIVITIES INCLUDED IN THE GOAL	PERCENTAGE OF AWARDEES
Education or Skill	Tuition, fees, books, supplies	73%
Reliable Livelihood	Debt relief, reliable transportation, technology, and childcare	65%
Homeownership & Household Stability	Down payment, home repair, home rehab, home addition, multigenerational housing	64%
Cultural Traditions	Language, cultural knowledge, healing practices, art, mentor or apprenticeships, equipment or supplies	46%
Business Development	Capital investments, equipment, supplies	38%
Food Security	Gardens or greenhouses, land purchase, infrastructure investments, livestock, food processing equipment or supplies, hunting and fishing	32%
Financial Planning	Financial courses, training, financial management, and advisement	20%

Many of the wealth-building plans developed by the Collective Abundance awardees were ambitious, especially given that most awardees selected more than one goal. However, even with many dreaming big, we are proud to share that 79% of awardees either exceeded or met most of their wealth-building goals during the award period. As you will see from the stories below, this is no small feat. Especially since many of these goals, such as homeownership, educational attainment, or business development, often encounter external obstacles that can make achieving them difficult or take longer than planned. 

Impact of Indigenous Wealth-Building

At the end of this first year of the Collective Abundance Fund, awardees had many stories to share with us – both about the impact the award had on their lives and the valuable lessons they learned through the experience. Collectively, this first year of awardees accomplished:

Much of the impact of the Collective Abundance Fund cannot be counted in percentages or acres. So in their final reports, we asked awardees to share examples of their most impactful experiences from their wealth-building activities. NDN Collective gathered these stories, read through each of them, and analyzed them to find the five most common themes that demonstrate how this year of wealth building impacted the lives of these 200 awardees, their families, and communities. 

Improved Quality of Life

The most common impact of the Collective Abundance Fund among awardees was an improved quality of life. This looked like distinct things to different awardees. Some described an increased quality of life in terms of having more time with family or reuniting with family members due to the business and financial shifts this award facilitated. 

For example, one awardee shared that the award “…created wealth for my family by jumpstarting my business that I am now able to continue with, even after my funding period has ended. This business has and will continue to create stability for myself and my family, including my two young sons. This business has provided me with the ability to move my family into our own home and get a family car.” 

By using the award to build more financial stability, this awardee was able to improve the quality of life for their entire family through both purchasing their own home and buying reliable transportation. Others described that by putting the award towards goals like home ownership or home renovations, they were able to make their home more accessible to visitors or intergenerational living. 

Focusing on self-care and healing was also a key contributor to improved quality of life for some awardees. This included stories shared demonstrating how the award gave them the resources to focus on wellness practices, heal from trauma, or be able to prioritize self-care for the first time in a long while.

“I am really happy to see wellness as a part of this grant because we often put our health on the back burner, helping others. But we are able to offer more of ourselves when we are healthy, strong, and well taken care of. And we bring a perspective of love and contentment into our work instead of stress and overwhelm when we are always run ragged and depleted of energy.” – Year 1 Awardee

This health improvement included both physical health and mental health improvements shared by awardees. Some specifically shared that this improvement stemmed from less financial stress after being able to pay down debt or finally affording a reliable car that didn’t break down. Awardees described experiencing a sense of relief and a renewed sense of hope. They shared that they had more energy to dedicate to their community and nurturing connections with loved ones. This is just one example of how we saw the effects of the Collective Abundance Fund ripple out beyond one individual into others in their lives. 

Generating a Sense of Accomplishment

The second most common theme that emerged from awardees’ stories of impact was how these resources and the opportunity to work toward wealth-building goals helped create a powerful sense of accomplishment among many Collective Abundance awardees. The source of this accomplishment varied by individual, but often included a big life step like educational achievements, finally reaching important financial milestones, or becoming a homeowner.

“The first example of my most meaningful experience throughout my wealth-building activity was the emotions from my children when they walked into their forever home! I knew that we were blessed beyond measure, and their gratitude was a humbling experience. It was definitely an emotional day, which ended in excitement as we were able to fill rooms with everything we couldn’t keep in our previous tiny home. The second experience was having my house blessed through our Lakota cultural practice. We have never had the opportunity to hold any spiritual practice in my previous home due to the lack of space. So to have family members as well as additional guests pray and share a meal together was extremely meaningful to me,” wrote Maureen Locke, a Year 1 Awardee

Purchasing a home is undoubtedly a large accomplishment, and one that multiple awardees were able to achieve. Some described how they felt when they realized home ownership could be a possibility for them because of the resources and skills provided by this award. Others shared that they were the first person in their family to be a homeowner, and one awardee excitedly told us about their plans to plant medicine and food in the surrounding land they purchased. Stories like this show that this sense of accomplishment doesn’t just end when the awardee meets their specific wealth-building goal, but rather how achieving that goal can inspire awardees to dream even bigger when they realize what they can achieve. 

Another source of accomplishment that awardees spoke about was related to business improvements and growth supported by the award. Similar to those who purchased homes, multiple awardees described how they were able to take concrete steps to start a new small business or expand an existing one. This often looked like launching a new business, fixing up spaces, purchasing new equipment, or fulfilling their largest order.

Business types that awardees invested in included cultural and creative businesses, construction, and food-related businesses. In total, the awardees created 173 new jobs and contracts, showing how this award can generate economic impact beyond the direct recipient and into the communities that gained these additional jobs. One awardee shared: 

“By building a successful business, I can contribute to economic growth, provide jobs, and support Indigenous storytelling. This regenerative impact extends beyond just financial wealth—it fosters representation, cultural preservation, and economic empowerment within my community.”

This awardee shows us how the impact of the Collective Abundance Fund can extend beyond starting up one new business, contributing to both economic and cultural empowerment within a community as a whole. It exemplifies the definition of Indigenous wealth through encompassing community well-being and using money as a tool to foster self-determination, which this awardee directs towards both economic growth and Indigenous storytelling. 

Increased Focus on Goals

Collective Abundance Fund awardees also shared how the award allowed more time and ability to dedicate to working towards their goals. This included the wealth-building goals they set, but also additional goals that emerged when other stressors in their lives were lessened by the award. 

“I felt like I was treading water trying to keep my head above water for a majority of my adult life. It was very impactful to be able to pay a lot of my debt down.” — Year 1 awardee

Awardees described how, by using these funds for things like debt relief, they were then able to better focus on other important goals. After paying down debt, awardees were able to focus on their education without taking a second job, save for home ownership, develop a healthy savings account, or purchase land. Even though awardees may have started with a singular wealth-building goal, once achieved, it created a positive feedback loop by making other wealth-building activities more attainable. Often, this happened by removing a financial stressor like lingering debt. One awardee described how the award helped them to pay for much-needed repairs on their car, which was key in them continuing to pursue their education and even participating in additional learning opportunities they may have missed without reliable transportation.

“With the help of the Collective Abundance Fund, I was able to successfully repair my vehicle, which allowed me to continue to pursue my education at the University. I did not live on campus, and my car was required in order to make the daily commute to campus, as there was no public transportation option available in the area. I was also able to attend the Dakota and Ojibwe Language Symposium, which allowed me to learn from experts in Dakota and Ojibwe language revitalization as well as network with experts in the Indigenous language revitalization field.”  — Keanon Brunelle, Year 1 Awardee

Serving Others

Across stories shared by awardees, we also saw a recurring theme of how individual awardees leveraged their award to help others in their communities. For some awardees, this looked like using extra time to volunteer, donating resources through their businesses, or teaching others cultural skills. 

One awardee, Malissa Walters, used the Collective Abundance Fund to purchase a food truck to expand her catering business. Since then, she has been able to take on more opportunities and grow her business, and appreciates how her food can bring people together and help them both in times of celebration and hardship. Now you can find her food truck, Malissa’s Fry Bread, organizing a food truck community feed once a month for houseless relatives in Rapid City, SD. She shared that she knows from personal experience how hard it can be to make ends meet for those having a hard time and estimates the feed has reached up to 300 people per month.

“I’ve always wanted to help in any way I can, and now that’s exactly what I am doing. It’s the small things –  from helping a fellow food trucker with advice on an issue I came across and how I overcame it, to helping families celebrate life and other events, and helping make the hard times easier by having someone to call on when they’ve lost someone in their family. But the biggest and most meaningful and impactful experience is helping our relatives daily who are less fortunate. They know they can come to my food truck for a hot meal.” — Malissa Walters, Year 1 Awardee

For other awardees, serving others meant being able to support family members or other relatives in meaningful ways. One example is how awardees used funds to renovate their home to make it more comfortable for multi-generational living or create extra space for extended family to stay with them. 

“Building wealth is about creating a life of abundance – not only with money, but abundance of love, connection, prayer, and generosity. This gift has given that to our family. This was all about sharing with family and community for me.” — Year 1 Awardee

Embarking on a Learning Journey

The fifth most common theme that emerged from the stories was how the award supported a meaningful learning journey. Sometimes this meant a learning journey within the educational system, like the awardees who pursued new degrees or certificates. But the impact of these learning journeys often went beyond awardees earning a new diploma to bringing valuable skills back to their communities.  

“One of the most important aspects was allowing me to continue to fund my education towards obtaining my Ph.D. Growing up, I was always told, ‘Education is something that nobody can take away from you.’ Therefore, by working towards obtaining my degree, I have created additional opportunities for myself and my family by leveraging these skills and applying them in my consultant business as well as my work within the community; it also modeled for my children the importance of obtaining higher education.” — Kiva Sam, Year 1 Awardee

For other awardees, their learning journey involved developing new ways to relate to money and understanding the role of money in their past trauma or emotions, thanks to the Trauma of Money training. Through both the award and additional workshops provided by the Collective Abundance Fund, awardees were able to pursue new strategies for healing their relationship with money and learn how to have a healthier relationship with their finances. 

The wealth-building projects undertaken by awardees also provided valuable lessons. Some shared how, during the award year, they learned a wide variety of skills, from project management to home repairs to how to navigate the home-buying process. Some awardees also shared how they learned how to build a greenhouse or design kitchen cabinets. 

Other important life skills were also gained on the awardee’s learning journey, like how to adapt to setbacks or find useful resources when faced with an unfamiliar challenge. The stories shared across awardees demonstrate the many ways that they navigated and learned from the experiences that arose from the Collective Abundance Fund. It is clear that these learning journeys will likely have a lasting impact on many of the awardees. 

“I am thankful for the last year of challenge and growth, my life will never again be the same, and that is a good thing.“ – Year 1 awardee

LANDBACK

As shown by the stories shared above, the impact this award had on awardees is hard to describe in a single example or number. We know there are likely many additional ripple effects from this award that won’t be realized until years later, that we may never know about. Based on what we heard from awardees in this one year of wealth building, we can already see impressive results. 

One impact that was not a direct goal of the Collective Abundance Fund but still showed up among multiple grantees was LANDBACK. In their final reports, 26 awardees reported they got LANDBACK as a result of their award. This totaled 1,065 acres across awardees, with most people getting about one acre of LANDBACK. The largest LANDBACK accomplishment by an awardee was 715 acres, which was acquired by someone who is a rancher and leveraged their gift for a larger loan to acquire the acreage for ranching. 

“The wealth we’ve built is a deep, enduring connection to the earth, the knowledge of how to live in harmony with it, and empowerment to sustain ourselves and future generations.” — Year 1 awardee

Awardee Insights 

In their final reports, awardees also shared important insights that we can all learn from when considering how to continue to effectively lessen the racial wealth gap. The most common lessons learned from Collective Abundance awardees included prioritizing planning, addressing trauma around relationships with money, and the importance of dreaming big. 

Prioritizing planning

When reflecting on their year of working towards their wealth-building goals, awardees agreed that intentionally planning the activities that will help them achieve their goals was an important component. They encouraged future awardees to be intentional about their goal-setting so that they could ensure the award has a lasting impact. Some of the ways awardees suggested going about this were through planning small steps towards larger goals and anticipating potential challenges before they arise. But awardees also recognized that things don’t always go according to plan, and it is also important to be flexible. 

Addressing trauma related to money

Awardees also shared how important it is for future Collective Abundance awardees to feel worthy of this gift. They encouraged them not to let imposter syndrome hinder progress towards their goals and believe that they are worthy of abundance. This may mean shifting their mindset around what wealth means and addressing past trauma related to money. Year one awardees found that the Trauma of Money training helped them realize they were not alone in their struggle with money. Also helpful was changing their mindset from a Western narrative of scarcity in capitalism to one of abundance defined by Indigenous values.

“For most of my life, I believed that financial struggle was inevitable for me—that homeownership, stability, or even something as simple as having a reliable vehicle were out of reach. Growing up on the reservation, I developed a scarcity mindset that made me feel like I would always be in survival mode. But receiving this support didn’t just relieve financial stress—it forced me to redefine my relationship with money and my own worth.” — Year 1 awardee

Importance of dreaming big

Another important lesson shared by awardees was to believe in the power behind their dreams. They encouraged future awardees to dream big, be confident, and work toward their goals. They found that yes, planning and project management were important, but the first big step in this process was to dream big. Awardees recognized the Collective Abundance Fund as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and encouraged future awardees to accept that their dreams are deserving of this opportunity. They shared that others should take the chance, put in the hard work, and make these big dreams come true.  

Lessons Learned by NDN Collective

The first year of the Collective Abundance Fund also taught us many lessons as an organization managing this unique opportunity to address the racial wealth gap that exists in our community. While the stories shared by awardees give us a lot to be proud of in this first year, we also identified ways to improve the program in the coming years to better support the awardees and this important work. 

Limit the Number of wealth-building goals to two

Many awardees choose multiple wealth-building goals to implement with their award. Awardees could choose as many goals as they wanted, but it became clear that working through more than two wealth-building goals in the timeline of this award presented challenges. To better support future awardees with planning, we plan to limit the number of wealth-building goals to two selected per awardee in future years. However, we also recognize that awardees may still achieve some of the other wealth-building goals as a ripple effect while working towards their two primary goals.

Lengthen the award timeline to 18 months 

Another lesson we learned was that 12 months was often not enough time for many awardees to fully achieve their wealth-building goals. In the first year, we had multiple awardees ask for extensions because their goals were making good progress, but taking longer than expected. This was especially true for those navigating home ownership for the first time or for awardees who experienced an unexpected life event during the award year. With this in mind, we decided to lengthen the timeline of the award in future years so that awardees will have a total of 18 months instead of the original 12. We hope that this extra time will help account for those unanticipated challenges that life tends to throw at us, especially when people are working towards big life changes.

Continue to provide power-building and support sessions

In the feedback provided to us by awardees, it became clear that they felt the power-building sessions were an important component of the Collective Abundance Fund. This included the Trauma of Money training and additional virtual power-building sessions hosted by NDN Collective. Many awardees shared that they found the sessions transformative, impactful, and that they supported their personal growth. They appreciated how the sessions brought together both Indigenous and Western approaches to wealth-building. These sessions also provided a space to emotionally process the award and realize that they were not alone in their struggles with imposter syndrome or feeling unworthy of this opportunity. Overall, these sessions not only taught valuable skills but also helped generate a sense of belonging among awardees. 

“I would suggest that folks utilize their resources to the fullest extent. This grant comes pre-loaded with some of the best support out there in the form of NDN staff, Power Building sessions, Trauma of Money training, plus more. Participate in these online gatherings earnestly and you’ll receive insight and knowledge you didn’t even know you needed, but you’ll be thankful to have it.” — Year 1 awardee

An Abundant Future

The Collective Abundance Fund was created by NDN Collective with a bold vision: to help close the racial wealth gap by awarding money directly to Indigenous people. The findings from our first year remind us that Indigenous abundance is not just a dream, as we see it demonstrated in the stories shared by our year one awardees. 

“The most impressive effects I have seen are not economic wealth or a large bank balance, the way western society defines wealth.  It has been families having safe homes, reclaiming 1000+ acres of landback, opening businesses and providing 50+ jobs in our communities, being the first to attend or graduate college in a family, sharing cultural knowledge, ceremonies, and connecting community, and reliable vehicles to go to work or school,” Sharon Pazi Zea, Senior Program Officer for the Collective Abundance Fund, said. “Most of all, shifting from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset and sharing their experiences with family and friends. Our awardees have shared that they have reclaimed stability and hope for future generations.”

As we finish year two and launch a third round of applications, we remain deeply honored to walk alongside these relatives who are showing us what our collective futures rooted in abundance can look like, beginning at the individual level. 

We send our deepest gratitude to the awardees who have so generously shared their stories, wisdom, and dreams with us. Their stories, along with our collective vision for an abundant future for all Indigenous Peoples, continue to guide this work, and we look forward to learning with partners and future awardees as this movement grows.

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To learn more about the Collective Abundance Fund or to read the full Year 1 Report, visit ndncollective.org/collective-abundance-fund. To support our ongoing work at NDN Collective, consider donating to the For The People Campaign: https://ndnco.cc/ftpcdonate 

This blog is based on findings from the Year 1 Final Awardee Report authored by Teresa Peterson. 

Lead photo by Josue Rivas for NDN Collective.

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