by Bridgett Ennis, Yale Climate Connections
October 19, 2026
Indigenous groups working to restore salmon, support climate-resilient buffalo ranching, promote youth stewardship of land and water, protect sacred sites, and much more will receive a total of $1 million in funding for their work through the Indigenous Earth Fund, the Decolonizing Wealth Project announced October 12.
The Decolonizing Wealth Project works with donors and institutions to raise money, and it relies on a committee of Indigenous advisers to determine which projects to support.
Yale Climate Connections spoke with Edgar Villanueva, Decolonizing Wealth Project’s founder and CEO, about his work, why he believes traditional philanthropy is broken, and how community-led funds like the Indigenous Earth Fund can make a difference.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Yale Climate Connections: How is the way the Decolonizing Wealth Project works different from how traditional philanthropy works?
Edgar Villanueva: The philanthropic sector is over $1.5 trillion, and the way that it traditionally works is that there are wealthy individuals or companies that create foundations or open accounts that are charitable accounts within financial institutions. And for private foundations, the law only requires that 5% of that money actually leaves the institution to go to the community. Nonprofit organizations apply for those dollars.
And so you have this divide of the haves and the have-nots. These institutions and families who create these foundations have a lot of influence on our society. They are granting according to their value system, and nonprofit organizations and others who are doing this work often have to assimilate to their way of doing things in order to get the money. So there’s a tension that’s happening where wealthy folks and companies are circulating resources to other wealthy folks, and [of the] resources that do get out the door to impact and support the community, very few of those dollars actually get to historically marginalized people.
Philanthropy is broken. Our communities are broken. So we train philanthropic institutions and banks and do lots of coaching and consulting on what we call our “reparative philanthropy” model. And that is both moving money back to communities and also doing the work that we, the folks who have resources and privilege, need to do to heal ourselves so that we’re not following the traditional colonial dynamics of hoarding resources or having scarcity mindsets. [Instead], we lean into an Indigenous worldview of abundance and share those resources.
YCC: What are some of these specific barriers that Indigenous-led groups and projects face in accessing funding in the traditional model?
Villanueva: Often the climate philanthropy space is research-driven and academic-informed, and that’s great. But Native folks are resilient – there’s so much wisdom there – but often our wisdom and way of being and seeing the world that’s been passed down for generations upon generations is maybe not seen as credible by some folks in the movement. And if a community is working on something that doesn’t align with that specific topic, then there’s not funding there.
And for Native folks, philanthropy is a foreign concept. We haven’t really historically thought about, “Oh, let’s go to a foundation and get money to do this thing to protect the planet.”
YCC: Tell me about how you’re doing things differently and introduce me to the Indigenous Earth Fund. What inspired this particular initiative and why is it needed?
Villanueva: I’ve worked on the inside of the industry for 20 years now, and I’ve seen how things work and how the system is often rigged to not benefit folks who need resources the most.
At Decolonizing Wealth Project, we work with donors – wealthy individuals and families – and with ecosystem advisers who are advising families on what to do with their money and their giving. And we also work with philanthropic institutions and banks to help them reimagine that this system can be different.
On the other side of that, DWP operates funds across a variety of issues to help redistribute capital back to communities across the U.S. I started the Indigenous Earth Fund because climate is such an important issue – we are absolutely in a crisis. It is an area where Indigenous people have a unique relationship with land and water from a cultural and spiritual perspective, which is so important. And I often think of those communities – I’m from one of them as a Native American person – as having the best solutions to the problems that we are experiencing and facing.
Yet Indigenous leaders are often not centered in conversations about climate, and so few dollars are going to Indigenous groups who are on the front lines – and risking their lives even – to try to push back on things that are harming the planet. And so I see my community doing this work – not to get a grant – it’s just what we believe. And being in this space and seeing this money flowing to things that often aren’t working – or maybe they’re fine. But they’re not supporting the folks who really are most impacted – we created this fund to divert some of that money to Indigenous leaders in the United States. And it’s the only fund in the States that is funding exclusively Indigenous Native American leaders.
I want folks who are on the front lines saving this planet, folks who I truly believe we can trust to guide us into the future and take care of this planet because they have stewarded the resources here for so long, to have all the resources they need. I stay up at night worrying about folks that I know who are so critical to this movement and yet have to spend half the time or more out begging for resources to do their work because they need to pay their staff. And so I want to see a fair share of the resources – and maybe even some over-resourcing for a while – to achieve some equity there.
All decisions made about funding, including the strategy and who receives those funds, are made by leaders from that movement. My organization simply raises the resources, and we facilitate a process, but we defer completely to the wisdom from folks who are leading this work on the front lines to tell us what we should be funding and who we should be giving those resources to. And that is very, very different from traditional philanthropy in that way.
YCC: Does the money that you use to fund projects come primarily from smaller dollar donors, or are you working with foundations that are looking to put their money to a good cause?
Villanueva: We do all of the above. We have this really beautiful donor community called Liberated Capital, and membership is open to anyone. You don’t have to be a millionaire to be a philanthropist. It’s a group of working-class, ordinary folks who give what they can. We have folks who are giving $5 a month and folks who give a lot more. One hundred percent of those funds are turned over to these community-led funds like the Indigenous Earth Fund to make all of the decisions. So Liberated Capital is really the backbone of our work.
And then I work with foundations and families to try to leverage what we’re able to raise to that community. So I will go to some of the larger foundations and apply for grants to try to increase what we have available. It’s really pretty amazing for folks who have been a part of that community, who are giving $5 a month to be able to say, “Since 2019, [DWF has] given away $30 million.” That’s a big multiplier effect from your $5, but that shows that every little bit counts.
And what’s beautiful about it is that we are all giving together and we feel really co-invested. And we share ownership, and we share in the celebration and the struggle of this work. And race, class, background doesn’t matter in the community. We’re all just human beings who are working to be better and to do better. And it’s been so healing, especially in these times that can be dark, and complicated, and isolating. There’s a community of folks that care, that anyone can be a part of, to meet folks and network and support good work.
YCC: Who can apply for funding through the Indigenous Earth Fund, and how are projects selected?
Villanueva: The amount of funding that we have available depends on what we’re able to raise. This past year [2025], we gave $1 million to 30 organizations. While we feel proud of that, we had $9 million in requests.
Once we determine that we have the resources, we meet with an advisory committee of Indigenous folks who are experts in this work, who are on the front lines, who understand the ecosystem. This group determines what the priorities are for that particular year. Are we prioritizing protecting water? Are we looking at food systems? Are we looking at building community power, movement building, and organizing? Are we looking at narrative change?
And once those proposals are in, these advisers meet and make funding decisions around how we allocate those resources.
YCC: Is there anything else you’d like to add as far as what you envision for a climate movement that’s guided by Indigenous leadership and wisdom?
Villanueva: I want us all to have what we need, and that’s why our mission is to transform wealth and to collective well-being, because if folks doing this work don’t have what they need, and if the planet is being harmed and we continue to ignore this climate crisis, we’re going to be harmed, because we are literally connected to each other and our interdependence is really inescapable.
And there’s been fantastic strides made, over the last 10 years especially, to try to bridge that divide. Folks are beginning to understand that, “Hey, these Native folks may know something. They are pretty resilient.” And there’s a lot of impacts and things that folks have seen in communities that are now beginning to be adopted as best practice by the larger climate and environmental justice movement.
I have learned so much that has changed my life sitting at the feet of these folks that we are supporting. I think that we can all try on an Indigenous lens and see that it’s not about me, me, me – there’s a collective here, and everything that we do matters. How you spend your dollar impacts others; where you bank and what their beliefs are matter. And there’s so much more that we can do together, and this idea of reciprocity and being in this thing called life together has been transformative. So I think if we can help people feel that in their spirits and hearts, so much would be different in this world.
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