Can we talk about...? A podcast on leading for racial equity in philanthropy · Philanthropy Northwest

Pearl Lujan and Abby Sarmac on Going Back to Our Roots with the Kindle Project's Indigenous Women's Flow Fund

·45 min·3 clips

The donor visit to Maria Naranjo felt like going to a grandmother’s house, not a site visit.

Abigail Sarmack opens with a question about what the Indigenous way of Indigenous women caring for their communities looked like at the start, and whether philanthropy can return to that simpler place. Pearl Lujan joins from the Kindle Projects Indigenous Women's Flow Fund. The conversation sits within the show's broader project of making the messiness of leading for racial equity in philanthropy feel less hidden. It also keeps attention on what that work looks like on the ground, where place, issue area, and community can reshape the job. Lujan talks about learning and unlearning, saying she had to question everything she had done before in philanthropy. Her background includes managing a major corporate fund, the Lush Cosmetics charity pot fund, and moving through different kinds of philanthropy, including government funding. The shift into the Indigenous Women's Flow Fund brought a different set of expectations. There was no paperwork ahead of time, which pushed harder questions about trust and accountability. At one point, the discussion turns to a report that had not arrived and a director who had not been heard from. Lujan names the tension between fostering accountability and inaccountability, and the episode leaves that discomfort in place. The conversation then widens to the reality that an elder is running this on the side of her purse, and that this work is tied to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Lujan describes Indigenous women in the cohort who go see the work in person and watch it with their own eyes. Abby Sarmack returns to the realities of donor relationships, fundraising, and the time that this work takes on the ground.

As heard by us

Indigenous-centered philanthropy, trust, and the cost of making care bureaucratic.

Pearl Lujan and Abby Sarmack center a practical question with clear historical weight: what would it mean for philanthropy to return to an Indigenous women's way of caring for community, instead of turning every decision into process and paperwork?

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Why you'd press play

When philanthropy gets buried in paperwork, this conversation returns to Indigenous women's care, trust, and community accountability.

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