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‘We understand the strength of our community.’

A person wearing a mask and gloves scoops food into a to-go container at an outdoor farmers market
Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI) hosts a farmers market and an urban farm with local vendors focused on the American Indian experience in partnership with the Native American Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis.

John Williams of the Native American Community Development Institute, a Kauffman grantee, discusses how they are strengthening the economic development ecosystem in the Twin Cities with and for the urban Indian community living there.

The Greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area is home to one of the largest and most diverse urban American Indian populations. The Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI) sits at the heart of that community, where a third of American Indians in Minnesota live.

A photo of John Williams, smiling and standing in front of a graffitied wall, wearing a black jacket and dark blue patterned shirt.
John Williams, Native American Community Development Institute Development Director

The Minneapolis-based community development organization and Kauffman grantee focuses on Native American arts and culture, civic engagement, and food sovereignty. The Kauffman grant supports NACDI to provide resources for the American Indian community in the Minneapolis/St. Paul entrepreneurial ecosystem to develop a policy framework and implementation strategy with and for American Indian entrepreneurs in their own community. NADCI is positioned to lead the conversation from a place of agency, strength, cultural respect, and understanding to instigate ecosystem-wide changes, creating consensus first with the community before engaging the broader ecosystem to recognize and act on the support needs of American Indian entrepreneurs in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

We recently discussed the work of NACDI with development director John Williams who seeks to strengthen an economic community development ecosystem with and for the urban Indian community in the Twin Cities.

Q: What are some of the unique ways NACDI serves the community?

We work really closely with our community to develop entrepreneurs. We have a farmers market and an urban farm. We do arts and culture programming and have a nationally known gallery called All My Relations Arts. Through our program Make Voting A Tradition, we mobilize large portions of our population to help them vote and understand the legislative process. And we have our Native American Cultural Corridor in Minneapolis with local vendors focused on the American Indian experience.

What do we have as a people that will help us grow as a community, and how do we support folks using our traditions and our culture to promote prosperity and help people understand that we, as a people, have everything that we need to address any of the social problems that we have?

— John Williams
Development Director, NACDI

Q: Sustainable asset-based community development is a cornerstone of NACDI’s mission. Why is that important, and what does it look like in practice?

Historically, I think not just Native American communities but BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities in general have been held in a deficit type of approach because there are so many needs. We try to approach our work with: What do we have as a people that will help us grow our community, and how do we support folks using our traditions and our culture to promote prosperity and help people understand that we, as a people, have everything that we need to address any of the social issues that we have – whether that’s homelessness, lack of opportunities for entrepreneurs, health problems, etc.?

Q: How does NACDI support entrepreneurship in Native communities?

Our role is to continually seek out opportunities in the broader community and region to provide to our community members. Let’s say they’re an artist, and they haven’t been able to find their way and navigate that system because art support can be very complicated. We help build bridges, connect people to funding sources, provide a place to show their work in our gallery space, and host artist talks. With our food sovereignty program, we help Indigenous urban farmers grow their businesses by selling their wares at our farmers market.

We hear plenty of stories from people, and their main challenges are: How do I get started? How can I become more? I have the entrepreneurial spirit, but where do I go from there? We try to link people to the resources that we’re aware of through our partners – like a Native CDFI (Community Development Financial Institution) in Minneapolis called Mni Sota Fund that helps people access loans and grants to start their business. We also have large support from philanthropy.

Q: How will the Kauffman Foundation grant be used?

About 12 years ago we developed the American Indian Community Blueprint. We need to revisit it and bring the community back together again to determine what the highest priorities are, how we can be most supportive, and how we can work collectively to address our community issues. Things change so rapidly, and with the COVID pandemic, there have been new challenges.

That’s where the Kauffman Foundation stepped in to say, “We’d like to help you start this work.” They were instrumental in us bringing together a brain trust of folks to say, “How do we go about doing this properly?”

Q: What makes you optimistic about the future for Native American communities?

When we have challenges, what it demonstrates to us is that our people are deeply resourceful and deeply optimistic about the future for their families. We’d never seen anything like COVID before, for example. Necessity is a mother of invention, and because of the need to work in a different way, it really helped people revisit how they could accomplish their goals. I think what has come out of this is that we understand the strength of our community and our ability to overcome obstacles.

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