Savannah Romero
Eastern Shoshone Tribe
In the shadow of this Fourth of July, as the nation prepares to commemorate next year’s 250th anniversary, many are reckoning with the hard truths behind the celebration—the wealth amassed through stolen land and stolen labor, and the generational costs borne by the very communities who made that wealth possible, namely Black and Indigenous peoples.
This legacy isn’t just one of exploitation, but of deliberate division.
For centuries, divide-and-conquer strategies have been used to fracture our relationships, sowing mistrust between and within our communities because when we are isolated or pitted against one another, we are less able to build the collective power needed to dismantle the systems that oppress us both.
That division isn’t accidental — it’s by design.
One of the clearest examples of this deliberate division is the use of differential racial classification systems to separate Black and Indigenous peoples, concepts that both solidified in the late 19th century.
While Black identity in the U.S. was constructed through the “one-drop rule” — categorizing anyone with even one Black ancestor as Black in order to expand the enslaved labor force — Indigenous identity was restricted through blood quantum laws, which required individuals to prove a certain percentage of Native ancestry to access land, resources, or tribal recognition. These opposing frameworks served the goals of colonialism and chattel slavery by expanding exploitation on one hand and shrinking Native claims to land and sovereignty on the other.
Together, they enabled the elite ruling class to maximize wealth extraction, reinforce racial hierarchies, and fracture potential alliances between Black and Indigenous communities. This legal and social engineering created false divisions rooted not in culture or community, but in the economic and political interests of those in power.
Despite centuries of intentional division of our communities, Indigenous and Black communities have demonstrated solidarity and support for one another’s movements throughout history.
From the maroon societies that sheltered both escaped enslaved Africans and Indigenous fugitives, to the powerful alliances between the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, to the frontline solidarity at Standing Rock and the shared cries for justice during the 2020 uprisings — we’ve always found ways to show up for one another. These moments aren’t anomalies; they’re a legacy of resistance we must reclaim and build upon, now more than ever.
The power of Black and Indigenous solidarity is precisely what inspired my co-founder, Trevor Smith, and me to start The BLIS Collective in 2022, which stands for Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty Collective.
We saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between Indigenous-led land reclamation organizing and Black-led reparations organizing because both movements are rooted in a call for repair for past harms, both share a strong economic framework, and both solutions are world-remaking and liberation-oriented.
That shared foundation led us to ask a powerful question: What would happen if we braided our stories and struggles together more intentionally — could narrative itself become a tool for deeper solidarity and collective power?
What has emerged from that question are the findings from our first narrative research experiment, The Fabric of Repair, which aims to understand the impact of braiding narratives between Black-led Reparations efforts and Indigenous-led Land Back movements. What we found was promising and reflective of our history — that a baseline level of solidarity already exists between the two communities.
Our research found that a majority of Black participants, 68 percent, supported Land Back, and a majority of Indigenous participants, 51 percent, supported Reparations even before the narrative intervention.
To our knowledge, this is the first data that captures cross-movement support between the Black Reparations and Indigenous Land Back movements.
As momentum builds behind the Black-led reparations movement and the Indigenous-led Land Back movement, so too does the need — and opportunity — to bridge the gap between these two visionary calls for repair.
Our Fabric of Repair research offers a powerful entry point into that bridgework. In a randomized experiment with more than 4,500 Black and Indigenous participants, we tested three distinct narrative approaches: one that shared the history of slavery and positioned reparations as the solution, one that centered colonization and framed Land Back as the response, and one that combined both in a “braided narrative” connecting the two histories and reparative solutions.
The results were clear: the braided narrative outperformed the others, it was the only video to increase support for both movements. Even more striking, when participants engaged with the narrative that directly addressed their own community’s history, it deepened their support for the other movement as well.
A Black viewer, for instance, who watched only the reparations-focused video, walked away more supportive of Land Back for Indigenous peoples.
This data affirms what many of us have long felt in our bones: our struggles are intertwined — and so is our repair.
However, the path forward is not without challenges.
One of the most significant barriers our Fabric of Repair research uncovered is a lack of hope — a critical ingredient for building and sustaining powerful movements.
While many participants expressed strong support for Land Back and Reparations, few of these supporters believed repair was actually attainable.
While 80 percent of Indigenous respondents supported Land Back, only 19.1 percent of these Land Back supporters believed it was achievable. Similarly, 76 percent of Black respondents supported Reparations, yet just 21.5 percent of them believed they were possible.
This “hope gap” reveals a deep disconnect between desire and belief—one that must be addressed if we’re to move from shared values to collective action.
The roots of the hope gap among Indigenous people aren’t easily pinpointed.
In my own family, community, and work with movement leaders, it’s evident that this hope gap doesn’t come from a lack of will — it comes from carrying the weight of centuries of struggle.
After centuries of broken treaties, forced removals, and government betrayal, it’s understandable that many people struggle to believe that true justice — like Land Back — is within reach. We are constantly reminded of a system that not only refuses to acknowledge these harms, but often glorifies the violence that built this nation. And for many, Land Back may feel like such a sweeping, transformative demand that it’s hard to visualize the steps between here and there.
But whatever the reasons, we believe this hope gap is one of the most urgent narrative challenges of our time.
That’s why, in the coming months, the BLIS Collective will test narrative interventions to better understand which stories spark hope — and which strategies help close the gap. Because hope is not a luxury — it’s a catalyst.
When people believe change is possible, they act. When they don’t, they disengage. And in this moment, when our lands, communities, and futures are on the line, we need action more than ever.
Closing the hope gap is not just a strategic necessity — it’s a responsibility to one another. Because when we believe that repair is possible, we begin to act like it. And when we act together, across our shared histories and futures, that’s when transformation becomes unstoppable.
The data confirms what our ancestors already knew: Black and Indigenous people are not each other’s obstacle; we are each other’s opportunity.
The path to repair is not one we have to walk alone. It can be braided — just like our stories, just like our futures.
Savannah Romero (she/her) is the Co-Founder and Deputy Director of the BLIS Collective. She is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and serves as the Director of Communications at Tahoma Peak Solutions, a Native Woman-owned firm that tells stories and solves through an Indigenous lens. Previously, she was the Manager of Movement Building and Organizing at IllumiNative, a racial and social justice organization whose mission is to build power for Native people by amplifying contemporary Native voices, stories, and issues. She has previously held program and policy positions at the National Indian Education Association, Cause Strategy Partners, and in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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