Introduction

Portland, Oregon, is currently home to approximately 90,000 Native Americans from over 400 tribes.i Despite centuries of policies that stripped away Native land and sovereignty, the Portland Native community has a strong and growing foundation of wealth and power today. The urban Native population shows symptoms of a larger society that is out of balance: concerning rates of homelessness, poverty, substance use, domestic violence, and more. But beneath these symptoms is an intergenerational web of community leaders, institutions, and relational systems that creates spaces of balance and belonging. In 2020, a team of Brandeis researchers from the Institute for Economic and Racial Equity (IERE) were invited to partner with the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) to explore the organization’s role in generating community prosperity and sovereignty in Portland’s urban Native community. As part of a larger set of research studies on Empowerment Economics (see Appendix A: Empowerment Economics), we were curious to learn how NAYA works with families on financial well-being and how the community generates collective resources and power in the face of structural racism and economic inequalities. NAYA and IERE worked together over the course of one year using participatory methods to co-design and carry out the study through a balanced partnership. An eight-person steering committee comprised of NAYA staff from the Community Development and Youth and Education Services departments provided oversight throughout the research process. We dedicated time and energy to building trust, raising funds to pay NAYA staff for their time, honoring and lifting up existing knowledge from within the Native community, and sharing decision-making power of this study. Together, we identified NAYA’s matched savings and financial wellness program, the Individual Development Account (IDA) program, as an appropriate focus for this case study. A team of four IERE researchers and three NAYA coresearchers conducted primarily virtual fieldwork over the course of one year and collected the following data,1 which the IERE research team analyzed: • 16 in-depth interviews with key NAYA staff; • 12 in-depth interviews with key community stakeholders (funders and partners); • 3 in-depth focus groups with 14 NAYA IDA participants; • 1 site visit to NAYA’s campus and NE 42nd Ave; • Observation of Community Development department staff meetings; • Observation of NAYA programs and activities; and • Analysis of organizational, regional, and public data.

1 Direct quotes from interviews and focus groups are italicized throughout the report.

Guided by the relational worldview model, NAYA’s approach to restoring balance in people, communities, and systems has much to offer those interested in holistic, effective community development and racial and economic justice. We offer this case study report as an example of a community-based organization that simultaneously addresses its community’s immediate needs while pursuing systemic and sustainable change.