Mark Trahant
Special to ICT
About a decade ago, Crystal Echo Hawk challenged conventional thinking with one single phrase: Indigenous “invisibility is not a superpower.” She backed up that slogan with research as co-leader of the groundbreaking Reclaiming Native Truth project. Then to get action, she created IllumiNative in 2018. An organization with the aspirational mission of narrative change. The charge was to disrupt invisibility.
Along the way IllumiNative produced remarkable results: Substantive research on Indigenous opinions; an open channel to the worlds of pop culture and entertainment; and working with partners on a variety of national campaigns from vaccines to support for the U.S. Senate confirmation of Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo.
Echo Hawk says now it’s time for a new path – and for IllumiNative to sunset. IllumiNative will wrap up its operations by the end of the year.
She said the nonprofit’s board of directors and President Michael Johnson have had conversations over the past year about the organization and the larger landscape. Those internal conversations, backed up by data, demonstrated that IllumiNative might not have the best framework required in the climate with so many dramatic changes in politics, social media and public affairs.
Echo Hawk, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation, is the founder and chief executive officer. Johnson is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation.
“We’re not taking this as a defeat,” Echo Hawk said. “We’re organizers first and foremost at heart. And we started this organization seven years ago because we really wanted to be a part of working as part of a movement of many movements with our people in Indian Country,” she said. “The conditions were ripe then … but everything has shifted dramatically.”
She said the work goes on. “While we are going to be sunsetting IllumiNative as an organization by the end of the year, the work is not going away. It’s going to continue and it’s going to evolve.”
Echo Hawk said it’s important for IllumiNative to finish strong.
“We see philanthropy starting to really shift and dry up and we’re in a great position now that we can take good care of our staff as we do this sunsetting and close out,” she said. “We still have a lot of work we need to finish up and wrap up, but we’re going to finish strong. I’d rather do that than operate in this crisis mode.”
And since President Donald J. Trump took office it has been crisis to crisis. “It seems like the news is changing every five minutes out of D.C.,” she said.
IllumiNative represents a decade of work, three years of research and design and a seven-year beautiful journey. “This is the right thing to do at this moment because again,” she said. “This is not about defeat or giving up.”
Judith LeBlanc, Caddo, is executive director of the Native Organizers Alliance and was often a partner with IllumiNative.
“I am so proud to have been in that circle. We are even more proud of the groundbreaking work we did together, Native Organizers Alliance and Illuminative as sister organizations,” LeBlanc said. “We surveyed over 16,000 Natives; we mobilized a historic Native vote in the 2020 elections, and interrupted the dominant narrative of who Indigenous people are and why we are central to the future of Turtle Island. We know Crystal’s next chapter will be as IllumiNative was, meeting the needs and aspirations of Indian Country in these complicated political times.”
“Under Crystal’s visionary leadership, IllumiNative emerged as a groundbreaking force, meeting a critical need for Indian Country to lead our own storytelling and shift narratives,” said Anathea Chino, Acoma Pueblo, co-founder and executive director of Advance Native Political Leadership, a Native-led organization focused on building political power.
Chino continued: “Crystal has relentlessly pushed for the visibility, representation, and dignity our communities deserve. We often say that culture shifts before politics do — and thanks to Crystal, Native peoples and communities are not only seen but heard, valued, and leading. Her deep care and commitment to ensuring that our peoples thrive is evident in everything she does, and I have no doubt that her next chapter will be just as transformative.”
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Erik Stegman, chief executive officer of Native Americans in Philanthropy, said he has watched the growth of IllumiNative from the beginning, serving on an advisory council.
“Since its launch, IllumiNative was an important new partner in the field at an important moment when the broader public was starting to finally see our communities the way we see ourselves, media needed guidance for how to tell our stories meaningfully, and new data needed to be developed,” Stegman said. “Although the context we’re working in has changed a lot since that moment, I wish Crystal and her incredibly talented team members over the years the best as they move this work forward beyond IllumiNative.”
For her part, Echo Hawk said she has seen landscape changes both in tribal nations and in the country. Starting in 2022 there was a rise in misinformation, much of it centered on the COVID-19 vaccines.
“We did our Indigenous futures survey and partnership with Native Organizers Alliance. And I remember being shocked when we got the results back after the 2020 election that only 60 percent of our population in Indian Country believed the results,” she said. “It was like something’s going on here and we are starting to see more and more of the shifts in the dynamics” including social media as an echo chamber.
So many voices trying to tell the truth are suppressed by algorithms or false stories.
“I’ve seen diminishing returns on our digital organizing strategies over the last year and a half and it’s pretty astounding,” she said. “IllumiNative was known for its rapid response. We’re able to jump on it, get people going, and taking actions around stories, but we would put something up and 10 minutes later Trump is like, ‘I didn’t say that,’ or it’s this or it’s that, and you’re trying to pull it back in and how are we not contributing to an environment of misinformation?”
The challenge ahead requires “different strategies and tactics,” she said. “Sometimes just the most powerful thing you can do is to take a step back and to really evaluate.” She said the goal is to truly understand what people are thinking and the stories told about that.
Call the next step a love letter. “A love letter to our community and to all the allies that joined us in this journey,” she said. “That love letter leaves things behind that hopefully are helpful, actionable, inspiring, that help us inform how this work is going to evolve. Because I’m not going away. Michael Johnson’s not going away and everybody that worked at Illuminative, right?”
One arc for the what’s next will come from research, Echo Hawk said, “We’re going to be doing a lot of grant making through the rest of the year, and that’s part of our sunset process is to make sure all the assets that we have are really going out to Native-led nonprofits that are in and around this work. I’m excited because I think we’ll also be doing a lot of funding around Indigenous storytelling.”
Echo Hawk said the seven-year effort has been a beautiful thing.
“We’re not done. It’s just going to evolve and change in a new way. But I want to really make sure I just give a special shout out and thanks for our staff, our board, for all of the people who have supported us, and especially for the people that invested in us. I think about the early days when people were like, ‘what is narrative change? What is this crazy lady talking about?’ But a lot of people just invested in us and said, I’ll never forget, one of our biggest funders, early funders said, ‘Crystal, go take this research and this money and go throw spaghetti at the wall and see what you can do for your community,’” she said. “What a blessing.”
Mark Trahant, Shoshone-Bannock, is the former editor of ICT. He lives and works in Phoenix.
Disclosure: IllumiNative is a funder of IndiJ Public Media, the nonprofit owner of ICT.
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