Current Projects

Racial and Economic Equity

In this evolving project, First Nations continues to explore and advocate for solutions and actions for racial and economic equity for Native peoples.

Native American Wealth Gap Research. With funding from the Target Foundation, this research is leading to, among other outcomes, increased understanding and awareness by policymakers, tribal governments, philanthropy, and the public about the extent and causes of the wealth gap, as well as documentation and validation of how Native people themselves define and experience the racial wealth gap and the role Native cultural perspectives play in defining wealth and shaping views of wealth accumulation.

Dispossession of Tribal Lands. First Nations is working with leaders at The Ohio State University to examine the dispossession of tribal lands at this land-grant university and the effects it has had on the economic, educational, and health disparities of Ohio’s Native peoples. The work is part of Ohio State’s “Stepping Out and Stepping Up Racial Justice” project, funded in part by the university’s Seed Fund for Racial Justice, which seeks to address the “original sin” of the nation’s first public universities, how schools like The Ohio State University came to be, and how the stealing of these lands has continued to marginalize Native people.

Racial Equity Research. In efforts to advance knowledge regarding racial inequity and its effects on Native infrastructures, First Nations’ Raymond Foxworth, PhD, co-authored “I Hope to Hell Nothing Goes Back to The Way It Was Before”: COVID-19, Marginalization, and Native Nations,” (published in Perspectives on Politics), which shows how continued political marginalization of Native Americans has compounded longstanding inequalities and endangered the lives of Native peoples, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.