Integrating Indigenous Leadership at SOCAP26
“If an institution truly wants to center Indigenous leadership, it doesn’t just talk about it; it deploys capital, cedes decision-making power, and restructures its processes. This year, our goal is moving from inclusion to doing.” — Vanessa Roanhorse, SOCAP26 Indigenous-Led Content Advisor
For the impact community to succeed in its shared goals for the future, trust across the entire spectrum of impact must come first. Building authentic relationships starts there, and our global success will only happen if the impact community trusts enough to incorporate shared authorship, power, and decision-making with leaders from all communities and perspectives.
“Indigenous communities have long experienced building for continuity, stewardship, reciprocity, and generations rather than quarterly returns and short-term gains,” says Alexander Sterling, SOCAP26 Indigenous-Led Content Advisor. “… Wealth creation and redistribution will increasingly be discussed together: not only how much return is generated, but who owns assets, who governs capital, who benefits over time, and what remains in the community. For Indigenous communities, that is the difference between access and economic self-determination.”
In recent years, SOCAP has taken important steps to create space for Indigenous presence and innovation. At SOCAP25, that commitment deepened with Indigenous leadership embedded into the planning process itself. SOCAP invited Vanessa Roanhorse, CEO and co-owner of Roanhorse Consulting, to serve as the Advisor on Indigenous-Led Content to ensure that Indigenous perspectives and voices are woven throughout the agenda. At SOCAP26, we are thrilled to have Vanessa return, alongside an additional Advisor on Indigenous-Led Content, Alexander Sterling, Board Chair & CEO of Turtle Island Community Capital.
“Attendees should expect to move past high-level agreements and get down to the hard, deliberate work of shifting capital under Indigenous direction,” says Vanessa.
Vanessa and Alexander’s expertise will help elevate Indigenous-led solutions and narratives throughout the event’s programming, including on the first day, when we will honor and celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, with Indigenous leaders and solutions integrated into the entire program. The event’s Opening Remarks will begin with a welcome from SOCAP26’s Elder in Residence, Dr. Dorene Wiese, President of the American Indian Association of Illinois, and a member of the White Earth Ojibwe Nation.
“SOCAP’s Opening Day on Indigenous Peoples Day is an invitation to consider how Native and Indigenous peoples can inform philanthropy and impact investing in meaningful ways, with lessons about community, responsibility, and the future that can be teased out, adapted, and applied across the field,” shares Megan Minoka Hill, Director of Native Self-Determination Program at the MacArthur Foundation. SOCAP’s partnership with the Foundation has helped shape the content at SOCAP26, including on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, notably the event’s Opening Remarks Fireside Chat featuring MacArthur Foundation’s President John Palfrey. He’ll be joined by Lance G. Morgan, President and CEO of Ho-Chunk Inc., and Carla Fredericks, CEO of The Christensen Fund — both leaders connected to the Native Self-Determination Program.
“We want SOCAP26 to move beyond, ‘How do we include Indigenous communities?’ toward, ‘What happens when Indigenous people are helping author the systems themselves?’” says Alexander. Hear how Vanessa, Alexander, and Megan are helping to weave Indigenous leadership into the programming at SOCAP26 — and the capital markets around the world — in our interview with them below.
What can attendees expect from SOCAP26’s Opening Day that honors and celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day?
Alexander: Opening Day should make the commitment to Indigenous leadership visible from the beginning. Rather than treating Indigenous content as a side track, SOCAP is opening on Indigenous Peoples’ Day with one of the Chicago Community Sessions, “Worldbuilding While the World Burns: A Practitioner Council on Capital Futures,” at the Center for Native Futures. For me, the most important part is the progression from recognition to relationship to action. I hope attendees experience the first day as an invitation to engage, learn, and move in ways that create the conditions for mutual thriving and a livable world.
“We can honor the people and land we are gathering on, listen to Indigenous leadership, and then continue into practitioner-led spaces where the question becomes, “How do we actually change the way capital is stewarded?” — Alexander Sterling
Vanessa: Opening SOCAP on Indigenous Peoples’ Day presents a critical opportunity to interrogate the capital system itself, a system historically structured to extract wealth and exclude Indigenous communities. However, honoring this day requires moving far beyond symbolic recognition to fundamentally challenging how capital flows, who controls it, and how value is defined. At SOCAP26, attendees will engage directly with models designed to dismantle financial friction and shift power.
What goals do you have this year with embedding Indigenous leadership and perspectives into the SOCAP26 agenda?
Vanessa: Last year was about shifting mindsets; this year is about shifting practice. Shifting mindsets from scarcity to abundance at SOCAP25 set the stage, but intention without execution is meaningless. If an institution truly wants to center Indigenous leadership, it doesn’t just talk about it; it deploys capital, cedes decision-making power, and restructures its processes. This year, our goal is moving from inclusion to doing.
Moveable capital requires trust, and trust is built on authentic relationships. We’re not just reshaping power dynamics at SOCAP; we’re inviting everyone to build relationships to do the work we are all being called to do. We are focusing on concrete outcomes: backing existing Indigenous-led funds, driving direct capital flow to community-controlled entities, and establishing real accountability for impact. Attendees should expect to move past high-level agreement and get down to the hard, deliberate work of shifting capital under Indigenous direction.
Alexander: We wanted the agenda to ask harder questions: Who gets to decide what is investable? Who is expected to carry risk? What knowledge counts as expertise? The goal was to make Indigenous leadership visible not as a special-interest perspective, but as practical economic leadership with lessons the broader impact field needs right now.
Indigenous communities have long experience building for continuity, stewardship, reciprocity, and generations rather than quarterly returns and short-term gains. Those principles become very concrete when we talk about underwriting, governance, ownership, and where capital lands. I wanted SOCAP26 to move beyond, “How do we include Indigenous communities?” toward, “What happens when Indigenous people are helping author the systems themselves?”
Megan: It is important to bring this work to SOCAP26 because Native and Indigenous communities have much to teach the broader philanthropic and impact-investing field about the importance of self-determination, sovereignty, and long-term thinking. Lasting prosperity is more likely to take root when communities have the authority and capacity to determine their own priorities and make decisions about resources. Bringing these lessons to SOCAP creates an opportunity to broaden the conversation about what it means to move capital in ways that directly support Native and Indigenous communities, generating a rising-tide effect. When tribal nations are able to strengthen their economies, manage their resources, build institutions, and create opportunities for their citizens, those benefits extend well beyond reservation borders; fundamentally, when tribal nations and communities do well, everyone does well.
What does co-authorship of a funding program look like in action for MacArthur?
Megan: Through the Native Self-Determination program, MacArthur supports the ability of Native nations, organizations, and communities to determine their own futures, on their own terms. At the heart of this work is a commitment to building long-term, sustainable relationships grounded in respect and reciprocity. This approach has been shaped by sustained listening sessions with intergenerational, intertribal Native leaders, practitioners, and community members, as well as by guidance from a Native Advisory Council. The program provides flexible, multi-year support to organizations that strengthen sovereignty and the exercise of self-determination, with a focus on cultural and community resilience, capacity building and leadership, policy, and ecosystems.
What themes have you seen emerging over the last year that you expect to continue into the future for impact investing, capital allocation, and wealth creation and redistribution?
Vanessa: Moving forward, capital allocation and impact investing are converging around two non-negotiable trends: First, funding the real cost of impact-first capital. The research from Miller Center for Global Impact makes it clear: impact-first investing isn’t inefficient, it’s market-building.
“The field is finally acknowledging that if we want capital to reach overlooked communities, institutional investors and philanthropy must pay for that infrastructure rather than expecting market-rate returns on extractive terms.” — Vanessa Roanhorse
Second, rejecting speed-and-dominance narratives in favor of collective equity. The MacArthur Foundation’s perspective on countering the “AI arms race” offers a crucial lesson for capital allocators: When we default to hyper-competitive, growth-at-all-costs frameworks, capital consolidates power, deepens inequality, and weaponizes technology. We are seeing a critical shift toward prioritizing long-term public interest, human dignity, and relational accountability over unchecked acceleration.
The future of wealth redistribution requires bridging these two truths: acknowledging the actual cost of building equitable markets and refusing to channel capital into extractive, competitive races that strip power away from everyone.
Alexander: The old idea of impact as a small allocation around the edges of conventional finance has well reached its limits. We are in a moment of institutional fear and retrenchment, but capital itself is not absent. The real question is who is being asked to carry real risk and who gets trusted to make decisions. I expect continued movement toward catalytic capital, community-governed vehicles, guarantees, patient capital, and investment in the infrastructure around deals, not just the deals themselves.
