Rematriating the Economy:
The Moonsoon Fund and the Power of Indigenous Women Reclaiming Capital on Their Own Terms
by Vanessa Roanhorse
Some partnerships are built on contracts. Ours was built on coffee, kids, laughter, and capital.
When I first met Jaime Gloshay in 2017, I didn’t know yet how important she would become to my life, my work, and the vision that would shape the Moonsoon Fund. What I learned, right away, was that I had met someone who got it. Someone who could speak the language of systems change and Indigenous self-determination, and crack jokes about growing up on the reservation in the same breath. Someone who, like me, was navigating motherhood, identity, and a financial world that continued to exclude and deny our very existence.
We discussed raising our kids in the city versus on our reservations and how complex the choices we make will impact their futures. As all rez kids living in urban spaces know, that experience of growing up on your homelands is irreplaceable and grounding in a way that is deep and ancestral, but we also know how hard it can be. We shared these stories about our families, our clans, and the challenges we saw growing up. In particular, we wondered why capital rarely flowed to our communities, why it felt extractive when it did, and what it would take to change that.
Over time, our friendship turned into something more: a shared commitment to build something bold and necessary.
And that “something” eventually became the Moonsoon Fund.
Vanessa Roanhorse, CEO of Roanhorse Consulting, in conversation about rematriating the economy and reimagining capital on Indigenous women’s terms.
Vanessa Roanhorse leads dialogue on shifting power and reclaiming capital for Indigenous women entrepreneurs.
Photo courtesy of Mateo Perez, Design and Marketing Manager at Roanhorse Consulting.
The Roanhorse Consulting team, pictured above, is an Indigenous women-led firm transforming power dynamics in health and wealth systems. The Roanhorse Consulting team is working together to reimagine capital and build a thriving future for Indigenous communities.
Photo courtesy of Mateo Perez, Design and Marketing Manager at Roanhorse Consulting.
In 2019, Jaime and I decided to attend SOCAP, one of the world’s largest gatherings of impact investors. The decision came after we met several leaders at the 2018 BALLE Shift Capital Summit—still one of the most important conferences of my career—who advised us that if we were serious about investing in Indigenous women, we needed to be at SOCAP. We were excited and overwhelmed, but very hopeful. This was, after all, supposed to be the place for new ideas and solutions.
But it didn’t take long for us to notice what was missing: Indigenous women. We were not on the panels, not raising the funds, and definitely not in the side meetings that happen around the conference, which, if you know, is where the real deals are made. Then came a moment we’ll never forget. After a long day of sessions, a fellow attendee asked us what we were working on. We shared our vision for a fund that would invest in Indigenous women using a reparative, non-extractive approach.
He looked at us and said, “Why should I care about investing in Indigenous women?”
In the seconds that passed, we did not know how to answer this question. Was he asking us to prove to him that our existence mattered? Was he asking us to do an elevator pitch? What were we supposed to say? In those seconds, our excitement turned to exhaustion, which turned into anger. Like so many before us, we have a deep history of trauma as it relates to money, and this person’s question nearly unearthed generations of trauma we both held in our hearts and wombs. We left the conference ready to do the work, and we started planning because we knew that to do what we needed to do, we had to create a fund for ourselves.
We didn’t start with fund management experience or a pile of capital. We started with trust. With community. With a vision shaped by our lived experiences as Native women who knew what was possible when you put resources into the right hands.
We’d already been doing this work in different ways at Roanhorse Consulting: an Indigenous-led social enterprise dedicated to transforming power dynamics in health and wealth systems to create a thriving future for our children and grandchildren. I had been co-designing alternative lending platforms like Co-op Capital, where loans were based on relationships instead of credit scores. Jaime, with her work in community development finance, had been working on helping Native entrepreneurs navigate broken systems across New Mexico.
Together, we were two of eight people who co-founded Native Women Lead, an organization designed to support Indigenous women founders. We brought the capital work to the organization by co-creating the Matriarch Funds, a scaffolded platform that provided character-based loans and grants up to $50,000 with a 3-5% interest rate to Indigenous women entrepreneurs. But after a couple of years, it became clear that even that wasn’t enough. Our sisters needed larger capital with options to be more creative than just traditional debt structures. Longer timelines. More freedom to grow and a bigger container had to be built.
So we dreamed bigger. We left Native Women Lead and kept building.
In the months that followed, we logged countless hours on Zoom, across hotel lobbies, over meals, on walks, through child pickups, late nights, and early mornings. We held space for each other when the work was heavy. We celebrated each other when the wins came through. And we always came back to one question: How do we move more capital into the hands of Indigenous women, on our terms?
There were plenty of technical things to figure out—legal structures, investment tools, fund design—but the heartbeat was always relational. Our friendship was the blueprint for the kind of capital system we wanted to build: one built on trust, reciprocity, and deep care.
From the beginning, we knew we didn’t want to build “just another fund.” The existing models, based on the 5 Cs of credit, were designed to exclude us. We needed a new framework, one rooted in Indigenous values and practices of relationship, reciprocity, and responsibility.
In 2019, with support from Common Future, a non-profit organization dedicated to building a more equitable economy, Roanhorse Consulting developed the 5Rs of Rematriation: Relational, Rooted, Restorative, Regenerative, and Revolutionary. These principles are not simply moral aspirations; they are a functional investment criterion. They shape how we vet opportunities, how we partner with entrepreneurs, and how we define success. And now the 5Rs have evolved into our investment due diligence underwriting framework.
Rather than seeing risk as something to avoid or punish, we see it as something to be held collectively. Those with the most wealth should bear the greatest burden of risk, not those already living on the edge of survival.
The name “Moonsoon” wasn’t chosen lightly. Like the desert rains it’s named after, this fund is about life, renewal, and timing. Monsoons arrive when they’re ready, not on our schedule, but right on time, and our connection to the moon cycle is evident in all we do. We thought of this work as being guided by the Earth while under cover of night, rebuilding our relationship with capital.
The Moonsoon Fund will launch in the winter of this year. The fund provides flexible, non-extractive capital through a variety of innovative tools, community notes, reparative notes, and philanthropic notes to Indigenous matriarch-led businesses in early revenue or growth stages. We fund not only what’s viable, but what’s visionary. Designed for founders who have been in business for at least two years and are ready to scale, Moonsoon supports those who often hit a growth plateau due to a lack of access to capital, not a lack of potential. Using our 5Rs of Rematriation investment framework, we plan to provide 3% interest loans and revenue-based financing up to $500,000. The Moonsoon offers a unique opportunity to invest in creators and cultural entrepreneurs who are sustaining tradition while innovating the future. Support and investment from philanthropy, including arts funders, can expand what’s possible.
There’s something powerful about doing this kind of work with someone who’s walked beside you the entire way. Jaime and I have supported each other not just as co-founders, but as women navigating leadership, family, community, and all the joys and challenges in between. We’ve balanced budgets and raised babies. We’ve built pitch decks and held each other’s grief.
And through it all, our leadership has stayed rooted in love. Love for our communities, for the land, and for each other. In this next iteration, we are joined by Justine Correa, Fund Building Specialist at Roanhorse Consulting, and Misty Cordeiro-Cary and Chelsea Daniels at Common Future, who have stewarded this fund to date. It is this next generation of leaders who are shaping the fund and its future.
And that’s what makes the Moonsoon Fund different. It’s not just a financial vehicle. It’s an embodiment of what it means when we rematriate the economy. In a time of rising inequity, political volatility, and cultural erasure, we need bold, grounded solutions rooted in community, care, and justice. The Moonsoon Fund meets this moment with clarity and conviction: it is a fund that centers Indigenous women, restores balance, and invests in businesses that are reshaping what’s possible. That commitment hasn’t wavered; if anything, it has deepened.
We’ve learned to navigate fund structures, compliance, and the politics of philanthropy, while also reclaiming our right to say no, to rest, and to lead from a place of abundance. In this moment of transition, reckoning, and reimagination, Moonsoon is not only what we need, it’s what we’ve been waiting for. And we invite you to join us in this movement.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vanessa Roanhorse, CEO of Roanhorse Consulting and co-founder of the Moonsoon Fund. Vanessa Roanhorse leads with a vision of rematriating the economy, reclaiming capital on Indigenous women’s terms.
ABOUT THE COVER ART
Fight With Love And Hope by Asis Percales for Fine Acts; updated by Grantmakers in the Arts (2025).
Follow Asis Percales across social media at @asispercales. The Greats is made with hope and love by Fine Acts.