I was thrilled to lead the first Decolonizing Wealth Intensive, our new day-long workshop experience, at Confluence’s 10th Annual Practitioners Gathering last month. It was only fitting to gather philanthropists and donors from around the world in Puerto Rico, a modern-day colony of the United States with a powerful history of colonial resistance. Puerto Rico, which continues to be at the behest of colonizing debt from the United States, is emblematic of the responsibility we all have to decolonize wealth. It was a full-circle moment for me, as I launched my book tour for Decolonizing Wealth in Puerto Rico in October 2018, prompting the beginning of powerful collaborations in decolonizing across the country and the world.
We began by grounding ourselves in the place and history of Puerto Rico: we honored the native Taíno people who have been forced to be resilient in the face of centuries of colonization. In recognition of this history of both trauma and resistance, and the colonization of peoples and lands all across the country, our workshop began with grieving. Only by grieving first can we begin to understand how colonization has affected us all, and grasp how our family story relates to this. Once we understand our relationship as individuals to colonization, then we can reflect upon how our philanthropic institutions, made up of individuals with our own unique histories, must examine and shift our role in colonization as well.
Shifting our philanthropic and investment practices begins with apologizing for how we in philanthropy have internalized colonization; as a group, we asked ourselves what harm our institutions or industry has caused. Each member of the group confidentially wrote apologies for how they or their institutions have potentially harmed communities. As a group, we sat with our collective grief and apologies. From there, we explored solutions, which began with listening to reflections from each other in an open, empathetic, and holistic way. We explored how fundamentally, as philanthropists, it’s our responsibility to increase and shift funding to communities of color. However, our solutions and the decolonizing of our institutions should go beyond funding. We dug into how our organizational culture and systems can change: how reconfiguring organizational design, deepening relationships with grantees and communities, shifting organizational culture and norms, and growing diversity in management and governance can be part of this process.
We closed out the workshop with commitments, asking ourselves the questions: What is the boldest commitment we are willing to make? How can we change our worldviews, organizational culture, and investment strategies? What are our next steps in following through on this commitment? In community, we shared our commitments and our plans to carry them out. Several participants signed the Decolonizing Wealth Pledge, making firm public commitments to operationalize the healing framework in their values and practices.
The Decolonizing Wealth Intensive is designed to lead us in our efforts to use money as medicine—because money, when directed by a decolonized worldview, can be used to restore balance and heal the harm in our communities.
###
Edgar Villanueva is a globally recognized author and philanthropy expert. His best-selling book Decolonizing Wealth offers compelling alternatives to the dynamics of colonization in the philanthropic and social finance sectors. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Native Americans in Philanthropy and is a Board Member of The Andrus Family Fund and NDN Collective. Edgar currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Programs and Advocacy at the Schott Foundation for Public Education. He is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and resides in Brooklyn, NY.
- Edgar Villanueva, Bestselling Author, Decolonizing Wealth
