Land Acknowledgement
Sunsetting as a Gesture of Reconciliation
Caroline and Tony Grant, Sustainable Arts Foundation
Christine Howard Sandoval is an enrolled member of the Chalon Nation who works with adobe mud, the same material used to build the California Missions in which her ancestors, and many of the state’s Indigenous population, were enslaved. Her 2020 piece, Arch— A Passage Formed By A Curve, references this Mission architecture through powerful subversion: with masking and erasure, the image serves as a metaphor for what’s left behind. The work is from a series, A wall is a shadow on the land, which calls attention to the lasting impact of colonization. The buildings are not celebrated but shown from a new perspective, transforming our understanding.
We have been thinking a lot lately about how to transform structures.
When we started Sustainable Arts Foundation (SAF), fifteen years ago, we didn’t think much about the literal meaning of the word “foundation”: something you build on. Still, it felt right: we wanted to form the basis of a community of artist and writer parents.
But in philanthropy, a foundation isn’t really a base. It’s a structure — like the Missions — born of the same privileged, colonizing belief system: we have the wealth, power, and resources. We know best what society needs.
We established SAF with an unexpected inheritance. We wanted to do something meaningful with this windfall while we were young enough to put our energy into it. At the time, we were parenting two small children. Both Caroline’s work as an editor and Tony’s late father’s career as a painter and sculptor made us think pointedly about a path forward. As a tribute to him, and as a recognition of the challenges faced by all creative parents, we decided to support visual artists and writers raising families.
From the beginning, we knew that unrestricted cash was important. If a poet wanted money for a dishwasher so they could have more writing time, we were the funder you could ask. Our application fees were modest, and they went entirely to our reviewers: previous awardees and finalists (all parent artists themselves). We ran a large program, averaging 2,000-3,000 applications each year. We joined Grantmakers in the Arts in 2011 and attended conferences regularly, grateful for the community.
“From the beginning, we knew that unrestricted cash was important. If a poet wanted money for a dishwasher so they could have more writing time, we were the funder you could ask.”
In 2016, we crafted a racial equity statement, pledging that at least half of our awards would go to artists of color. That year, our applications jumped from 1,200 to 3,600; the percentage of applicants of color doubled, from 20% to 41%. It had seemed like such a small change, and yet it resonated with thousands. We were putting out a welcome sign: “we see you.” It was our first lesson in the power of acknowledgment.
But over the years, the process got harder for us personally. The racial equity initiative helped us increase the diversity of our review panel, but we were still just taking their recommendations for our decisions. We grew increasingly uncomfortable with this “final say” and started to explore how we might do things differently.
As a small organization, we had the autonomy to pivot and reshape our program; we wanted to take advantage of our agility and make a significant change.
At the same time, we were also considering our privilege more critically: who gets to be philanthropic? Why do donors get tax breaks for giving money to charitable foundations, and then continue to control that money?
It started to feel less like a problem of process and more like an issue of identity. Could our organization ever be equitable with its two wealthy, White founders at the helm? We considered stepping back. We drafted a rough plan for naming a new BIPOC leader. A further revision imagined creating a new foundation and pouring our assets into this organization over a period of years. The goal in any of these evolutions was to reduce the influence of our legacy. To reference Sandoval’s work: structures (both literal and figurative) will always cast shadows, but how we contend with them matters.
At this point, we hired Justin Laing of Hillombo Consulting. We’d met Justin through a months-long series of GIA workshops on Pro-BIPOC Arts Funding. We knew from experience that he would bring a much more challenging social lens to our proposed transition.
“Through our conversations, we came to realize that the solution wasn’t for us to do things differently, but for us to stop doing them at all.”
Through our conversations, we came to realize that the solution wasn’t for us to do things differently, but for us to stop doing them at all. We did the math on the labor involved in running our program. After accounting for the time spent submitting and reviewing applications, the numbers were troubling: the estimated workload of artists, reviewers, and ourselves came out to about 10,000 hours for the $100,000 we offered to individuals each year, or $10/hour. In California, where we live, the minimum wage is $16/hour.
We could live with the inefficiency for ourselves— art is not about efficiency — but we couldn’t live with the message this sent about how we valued the time of our applicants. Over the years we had simplified the application, but we knew that we were just one of many opportunities they were applying for. How could we ask so many applicants to participate in this time-consuming lottery for limited funds?
Justin invited us to consider the phrase, “what you do is what you are.” While we’d always thought of SAF as a grantmaking institution, we were turning down nearly 2,500 artists each year. He put it pointedly: “You’re running a rejection program.” Our work now, moving forward, will be supporting the 99% of our applicants who did not receive awards. In a recent conversation with GIA’s Nadia Elokdah, she noted that our presence — any funder's presence — in the community has been “so metered by power.” We look forward to creating connections and building support with a newfound authenticity.
“Our work now, moving forward, will be supporting the 99% of our applicants who did not receive awards.”
We also started to reconsider how we thought of this money we had inherited; “windfall” is a euphemism. It was not just money dropped from the sky. It had history. And like much history, it had trauma.
Our inheritance came from the royalties on oil fields in Central California. This land was stolen from its original inhabitants, who were forcibly removed through murder and enslavement.
We no longer felt entitled to use this money. We decided, as a gesture of reconciliation, to return our assets to Indigenous people.
Initially, we thought half of our funds would go to Native communities, and half would go towards supporting parent-artists through large, one-time spend-down grants. It felt like a fitting balance to both recognize the source of our funding and also support the community we’d been serving for so many years.
We continued to revise our plan, consulting with colleagues in the arts, anti-oppression, nonprofits, and grantmaking. In conversation with YK Hong from Keep Beyond, we realized that if we believed what we said about the source of our funding, we couldn’t reserve half of our assets to spend down at our own discretion.
“We needed to do the most repair where the most harm had been done. For us, and our foundation’s history, that meant acknowledging the land and the people who lived there. Returning all of the foundation’s assets to Native communities was a difficult realization for us.”
As YK reminded us, we needed to do the most repair where the most harm had been done. For us, and our foundation’s history, that meant acknowledging the land and the people who lived there. Returning all of the foundation’s assets to Native communities was a difficult realization for us. We felt responsible — and deeply connected — to the community we had served for so long, and mindful of the fact that no other grantmakers recognize this specific population. But once we arrived at our decision, it felt so obviously correct.
At one time, we had considered adding a land acknowledgment to the mission statement on our website. But would anyone notice it? Would it matter if we weren’t saying it out loud? And did it matter when the land the foundation derived from was miles from where we lived and worked? What could we do about that land?
We are glad, finally, to make a more meaningful acknowledgment. As we are working with Native leaders to meet and identify the communities and organizations who will receive our final grants, we’ve learned about California’s formal efforts to repair relationships with its tribes and their descendants, via a council and a fund whose names both use the phrase “Truth and Reconciliation.” It can be daunting to confront the enormity of financial reckoning. How do we make amends for slavery? How do we account for cultural erasure, stolen lands, and lost lives?
We are leaning hard into the “truth” of “Truth and Reconciliation.” While our funds may not amount to much (SAF’s budget is a rounding error among the GIA cohort), an acknowledgment of what actually happened, and how this wealth was built, feels important. We invite all those in institutional philanthropy to interrogate the source of their money and to consider who might have been disadvantaged, harmed, or worse, in its accumulation.
We wonder how funders might approach their jobs differently if they brought a new perspective to the ideas of legacy and ancestry.
“We invite all those in institutional philanthropy to interrogate the source of their money and to consider who might have been disadvantaged, harmed, or worse, in its accumulation.”
In this spirit, we close with a photo of a ceremonial Chilkat robe made by the weaver and teacher Lily Hope, who is Tlingit Indian, of the Raven moiety. Titled “Between Worlds,” the robe blends traditional imagery and technique with contemporary design, connecting the world of the living and the world of the ancestors, and emphasizing that these two worlds are always close.
While our actions can’t change the past, we can acknowledge it truthfully. We can work to reduce the shadows of the darkest moments in our history and change our focus from building generational wealth to enacting generational repair.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS & ARTISTS
Caroline and Tony Grant are co-founders of Sustainable Arts Foundation. You can read more about each of them and the foundation’s past and current work at their website.
Christine Howard Sandoval is a multidisciplinary artist who questions the boundaries of representation, access, and habitation, where what is held in the land and what is held within state sponsored archives negotiate shared spaces of meaning. She is an enrolled member of the Chalon Nation. Learn more at her website.
Lily Hope was born and raised in Juneau, Alaska to full-time artists. She is Tlingit Indian, of the Raven moiety. Following her matrilineal line, she’s of her grandmother’s clan, the T’akdeintaan. She is president and co-founder of www.spirituprising.com, a non-profit dedicated to maintaining, recording, and teaching weaving with integrity. Lily’s contemporary works in textile and paper collage weave together Ravenstail and Chilkat design. Learn more at her website.
