Healing, Bridging, Thriving: Working For The Economic Well-being of Indigenous Artists

Arts and culture enrich our lives, our communities, and our nation. In this pivotal moment in our history, there is a growing recognition that the arts reveal new ideas, unlock opportunities, and help us confront the many challenges before us. On January 30, 2024, the White House Domestic Policy Council and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) co-hosted Healing, Bridging, Thriving: A Summit on Arts and Culture in our Communities, a first-of-its-kind convening to share insights and explore opportunities for arts organizations and artists to contribute to the health and well-being of individuals and communities, invigorate physical spaces, fuel democracy, and foster equitable outcomes. In this blog series, you’ll hear from the many diverse perspectives represented at the event—including government officials, policymakers, artists, advocates, academics, and arts leaders—as they share what ideas and inspiration they took from the experience, and how they’re working to advance a broader understanding of how arts and culture can contribute to other fields and unlock new opportunities for artists.

The poverty and lack of professional opportunities many artists and creatives in the so-called United States face, are made significantly worse for Indigenous creatives who are suffering the soul crushing weight of on-going genocide and colonialism. The discussions surrounding the economic well-being of artists that occurred at the Healing, Bridging, Thriving event, held January 29, 2024, are at the forefront of the organizing Crushing Colonialism is committed to. 

Crushing Colonialism is an Indigenous-led non-profit that uplifts Indigenous people through arts, media, and traditional storytelling while supporting those doing the work. We were founded in 2016 and are operated by Indigenous people working in a variety of storytelling fields across the world. We produce international reporting and organizing to inform and empower marginalized community members, create professional opportunities, and advocate for the just funding and employment of Indigenous artists, media workers and storytellers. In doing this we control our narratives in order to crush colonialism.

We focus on reaching Indigenous communities across the so-called United States and globally with place-based events, professional opportunities, print, and digital content. Our decolonial approach to media, storytelling, and communication, respects the specificity of different practices between tribal nations and places, and avoids Global North positions. 

Storytelling is a traditional Indigenous practice, rooted in knowledge-sharing among community. We use it as a tool to combat racism, ableism, and other forms of oppression by supporting education and narrative building to advance equity and justice. Indigenous people still face hyper-erasure in the arts and media despite experiencing some of the highest rates, per capita, of violence, suicide, disabilities, houselessness, poverty, and more. 

Many Indigenous communities are independently telling our stories on a national and international stage for the first time. With this though, often comes exploitation. Crushing Colonialism is committed to growing the professional and economic opportunities for Indigenous people, as well as the act of cultural preservation and sovereignty, through our programming, which includes an independent magazine, an arts and performance series, and, launching in 2025, a campaign to promote the just funding, representation, and employment of Indigenous storytellers.

In The Magazine, which is available in both English and Spanish, we’ve published everything from photo essays connecting the issues of the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirits movement across the so-called borders; breakdowns of important Supreme Court cases’ impacts on Native communities; the Tren Maya and its impacts on Indigenous people in Mexico; the preservation of ceremonial dance and music in the Bijagós Islands; and original art honoring and celebrating the life of Nex Benedict, a Choctaw non-binary youth that lost their life due to anti-queerness. We pay competitive rates to our contributors and seek work from Indigenous people in all stages of their career. We hope to expand our coverage of hearings, elections, laws, and the inclusion of tribal communities in government decision-making, while also advocating for Native journalists to have easier access to credentials to attend hearings.

Decolonized Beatz Indigenous World Pride (DBIWP) is part of the Decolonized Beatz arts and performance series that Crushing Colonialism hosts. It’s a way for Indigenous Queer artists to challenge colonial narratives of queerness and reach Indigenous people through their own stories and voices on an international stage. The 2024 Decolonized Beatz Programming includes a paid film training for four Indigiqueer youth, the creation of an album with original music, and an archival project. Our commitment to moving financial and career resources to Indigenous creatives includes paying all of our DBIWP artists, speakers, performers, organizers, and council members for their time. The beauty, talents, and genius of our artistic kin should be respected, valued, promoted, and paid for. 

Indigenous people, per capita, have the highest rates of poverty of any ethnic or racial group in the so-called US. Multiply-marginalized Indigenous people face unique challenges working in media and storytelling due in part to specific barriers accessing resources and experiencing multiple forms of violence and discrimination from within and outside their communities. #HireIndigenous is a campaign to promote the just funding, representation, and employment of Indigenous storytellers, launching in 2025. We are building a media campaign, creating trainings and resources for Indigenous storytellers across career stages, and now have on our website a paid professional opportunities board to share and search for paid jobs, fellowships, calls for submissions, and more. 

Crushing Colonialism will continue the work for the seven generations to come to create decolonial, fulfilling, and well paid opportunities for our multiply-marginalized Indigenous relatives. When equitably and justly resourced, there’s nothing Indigenous people cannot do.

Jen Deerinwater is a bisexual, Two-Spirit, multiply-disabled, citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and an award-winning journalist and organizer who covers the myriad of issues hir communities face with an intersectional lens. Jen is the founding executive director of Crushing Colonialism and has been awarded several fellowships, including the 2019 New Economies Reporting Project, 2020 Disability Futures, and the 2024 Disability Visibility fellowship at the Unexpected Shape Writing Academy.