The Hummingbird's Promise

At the heart of our solution lies a poignant truth: the Navajo Nation's biodiversity, once a vibrant tapestry woven through time, is unraveling under the weight of a changing climate. The world we have created is one our plant and animal kin have never known. And this challenge is not ours alone; it mirrors a global crisis where the harmony of life is faltering across every ecosystem in every corner of the globe, echoing the distress calls of a planet in peril. Globally, up to 1 million species currently face the threat of extinction, a loss rate hundreds of times higher than historical averages. Equally stark, the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report (2020) indicates a 68% decline in wildlife populations over the last half-century alone—likely more than at any point in recorded history. And locally, the impact is no less dire. Species vital to the Navajo's ecological and cultural tapestry are in jeopardy—and with them, our traditions, our stories, and our future as a people. In this light, the climate crisis does not discriminate; it is a harbinger of loss for every community that calls this planet home. But for indigenous communities like my own, it is also an assault on my people's very identity, and an existential threat to the connection we hold to a land that has cared for us for centuries. Within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation alone, the issue of climate-accelerated biodiversity loss will directly impact over 170,000 resident tribal members, whose cultural practices, language, and traditional knowledge are fundamentally intertwined with the health and vitality of not just our physical environment, but all the plant and animals who also call these lands "home."

The latest update to the Navajo Endangered Species List (2020) reveals the full extent of this crisis: species that once thrived across our tribal landscapes, such as the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, the Mexican Spotted Owl, and the Colorado Pikeminnow, are now facing the threat of full extinction—a fate directly tied to a changing climate. This rapid decline in biodiversity is a glaring indicator of the broader ecological imbalances that climate change has exacerbated. As Navajo, our traditions, our stories, and our very identities are rooted in the chorus of the land’s biodiversity. Each species, in its own way, sings a song of our shared history—be it through our ceremonies, our dances, our names, our language, or the healing knowledge passed down by our medicine men. But as the climate shifts, these voices are beginning to fade, and that process threatens to silence the heritage we’ve lived by since we first entered this world long ago. Within our communities, the scale of this loss is immeasurable. Not in numbers alone, but in the stories, customs, and the living heritage our non-human kin embody. Our endangered relatives are not mere statistics; they are keepers of wisdom, teachers of balance, and kin to our people—integral to the cultural tapestry that connects us to our past and guides our future.

Through The Hummingbird's Promise, we hope to harness the power of art to fund direct climate resilience efforts on the Navajo Reservation, ensuring that the voices of the Gray Wolf, the Colorado Pikeminnow, and all the endangered species on Navajo tribal lands continue to be heard across time. Using the sales of these art pieces—including enamel pins, postcards, calendars, and stickers, we hope to provide a stream of unrestricted funds that can be flexibly allocated to local community members or to existing tribal government programs under the Navajo Nation Natural Heritage program or Fish and Wildlife service for direct climate resiliency efforts on the reservation. We hope using art sales to generate a pool of unrestricted funds for climate resiliency work will enable the Navajo Nation and her local communities to prioritize novel climate resiliency efforts ranging from direct habitat and watershed restoration to the development of climate-change related educational materials in the Navajo language, specifically designed to engage Navajo-speaking elders. Such direct actions are the tangible steps needed to start building a climate resilient community—one that is prepared to take responsibility for and adapt to their changing climate. We hope that the project's unrestricted funding model allows for flexible responses to emerging climate-related challenges, while supporting a creative, dynamic, and proactive approach to conservation and climate resiliency on Navajo lands.

Through this solution, we are not just crafting images; we are etching the essence of our homeland into memory and material, using commerce in service of conservation. This is a story of beauty and loss, but also of hope and action. The Hummingbird's Promise is not simply a project title; it is our vow to fight for the chorus of life that has serenaded the Navajo people for generations. It is a promise to the earth that her songs will not go silent, that the dance of the hummingbird, the howl of the wolf, and the ripple of the fish will endure—as will the people who honor them. Courtney's brush will bring form and color to our critically endangered kin, transforming their plight into powerful emblems that can reach into the hearts of our youth and elders alike. Her work will make visible the beauty of conservation, moving beyond words into a realm where color speaks of balance and every line draws the soul to act with urgency. Our ancestors foresaw the importance of balance, and today we are called to restore it. The Hummingbird's Promise is our covenant with the earth, with the sky, and with the water. It is our pledge that the hummingbird's dance will not fade into memory, but will continue to guide our steps as we walk in beauty through all our relations.

In the heart of canyons deep and wide,
Where ancient rocks and spirits reside,
A promise was whispered on the wind,
A vow from the hummingbird, a pledge to the sky,
To the earth, to the waters, where our futures lie.
A commitment to guard, to cherish, to revive,
Thee sacred lands where our cultures thrive.

Our solution is designed primarily to benefit the Navajo Nation, a vast Indigenous community spanning portions of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. It is the community I was born and raised in. A people rich in culture and tradition—but living in a desert, the Navajo face unique challenges posed by climate change, including water scarcity, land degradation, and the loss of biodiversity. Our solution seeks to address these challenges by using art-based commerce to fund grass-roots environmental conservation and climate resiliency work on Navajo lands in support of local tribal members.

Understanding and Engaging the Community

To ensure our solution is both relevant and respectful, our team is lead by a member of the Navajo Nation who has work previous experience directly in climate adaptation and mitigation work on Navajo Lands, ensuring our efforts are intimately in-tune with the tribal community's needs and aspirations. This inclusive approach ensures our project is not only about the Navajo people but spearheaded by them.

Addressing Community Needs

Our project, through the creation and sale of art inspired by endangered species on Navajo lands, aims to achieve several key objectives:

• Cultural Preservation
  By highlighting species significant to Navajo culture and tradition, our project aids in preserving the rich biodiversity that is intrinsically linked to Navajo heritage and storytelling.

• Environmental Education
  Through engaging art and educational materials, we aim to raise awareness about climate change and conservation among the Navajo youth, empowering a new generation to champion the sustainability of their lands.

• Economic Empowerment
  The proceeds from the sale of our merchandise will directly fund local conservation projects and educational programs. This not only addresses immediate environmental needs but also supports the local economy, creating jobs and funding initiatives that contribute to the community's overall well-being.

• Community Climate Resilience
  By using our sale proceeds to invest in endeavors like habitat restoration and the development of climate-adaptation materials in the Navajo language, our project can directly contribute to building a more resilient Navajo Nation capable of withstanding the challenges posed by a changing climate.

In developing our project, we are committed to a model that places the Navajo community at the forefront of both the problem-solving process and the benefits derived from our efforts. This approach hopes to ensure that our solution is not only sustainable but also deeply rooted in the values, knowledge, and priorities of the Navajo people. By prioritizing Indigenous-led solutions and directly involving the community in every step, we believe our project will make a meaningful and lasting impact on the lives of members of the Navajo Nation living on the reservation.

Our team's unique capacity to deliver this solution stems from a powerful harmony between Courtney's artistic capacity and my deep-rooted connection to the Navajo Nation. While Courtney may not hail from the reservation, her exceptional talent as an artist and color theorist, in addition to her strong commitment to animal conservation work are invaluable to our project. My background and ties to the land complement her skills, together laying a strong foundation for a project that is both impactful and deeply connected to the Navajo community.

Courtney's Artistic Expertise
Courtney brings to our team a remarkable ability to create visually stunning art that speaks to a broad audience. Her work, characterized by its elegance and attention to detail, is crucial in transforming the concept behind The Hummingbird's Promise into tangible outcomes. Through her art, Courtney has the capacity to capture the essence of Navajo lands' endangered species, turning each piece into a powerful tool for awareness and engagement. Her dedication to animal conservation enriches her artwork, imbuing it with a depth and sincerity that resonate with our project's goals. She is also well-versed in artistic collaboration, enabling her to expand our team as needed through strategic partnerships with other artists.

Synergizing Art and Heritage
While Courtney's artistic skills are essential, the project's authenticity and depth are amplified by my own connection to the Navajo Nation. This connection ensures that our project remains grounded in the community's culture and environmental challenges. By combining Courtney's talent with my insights and experiences, we ensure that The Hummingbird's Promise is not only a collection of art but a meaningful narrative that celebrates and seeks to protect my people's heritage.

Engagement and Representation
Our approach to developing this solution is characterized by a commitment to genuine community engagement. Courtney's art serves as a catalyst, inviting conversation and collaboration. Meanwhile, my ties to the Navajo Nation enable us to navigate these interactions with respect and understanding, ensuring that the community's voice is central to our project's direction. This dynamic allows us to create art that is not only beautiful but also representative of the Navajo people's aspirations and concerns.

Addressing Community Needs
The collaboration between Courtney and myself is key to creating a solution that addresses the Navajo Nation's needs. Courtney's ability to produce compelling, marketable art pieces, combined with my understanding of how to couple sale proceeds to my community's specific climate-related challenges and needs, allows us to flexibly tailor our climate resiliency approach.

In short, partnership between Courtney's artistic capacity and my connection to the Navajo Nation is what makes our solution uniquely positioned to succeed. Her talent in bringing the beauty and plight of endangered species to life, paired with my insights into the community's heritage and environmental challenges, form the backbone of a project designed to inspire change and foster a deeper connection with the natural world.

Our solution is currently in the Concept stage of development. This classification reflects our present position in exploring and researching the feasibility of creating and then scaling a sustainable product series and business-model through art intended to support environmental conservation and cultural preservation work on Indigenous lands.

The genesis of The Hummingbird's Promise derives from a prior collaborative effort between our team: the Four Sacred Mountains project, which was completed in October of 2020. This endeavor involved creating new artistic depictions of the Navajo Four Sacred Mountains and, upon completion, was met with overwhelming support and enthusiasm from the tribal community, especially once we shared the works on social media. The positive feedback was a powerful affirmation of my tribal community's appetite for art that resonates with our shared natural heritage. Unlike the Four Sacred Mountains project—which was released under an open-source license without strong monetization aims—our solution here seeks to harness the commercial potential of similar artworks in order to directly fund environmental conservation efforts on Navajo lands.

At this development stage, in addition to using any seed capital to produce new artworks and manufacture products based on those works, our focus is set firmly on refining our overall approach to coupling our business to our social aims; on this front, we aim to engage more thoroughly with local community members and potential partners to find meaningful climate resiliency efforts worth funding, conducting the necessary research to ensure our project can scale effectively alongside the climate resiliency work we look to fund.

The decision to classify our project as a Concept is a reflection of our commitment to transparency and integrity in the development process. We acknowledge that while we have an extremely strong foundation based on previous collaborative successes and positive community feedback from the Four Sacred Mountains project—all in addition to Courtney's extensive experience in the art media space—our solution is still in its infancy. Our next steps involve the creation of new art, further community consultation to refine our marketing approach, prototype development to test our product ideas, and market research into sustainable business models that couple well to our long-term social aims in the environmental conservation space.

Furthermore, by situating our solution in the Concept stage, we hope to indicate an openness and commitment to the long journey ahead—including whatever challenges and opportunities it might present. That is, even though it is still just a concept, we are committed to developing The Hummingbird's Promise into a functioning solution that not only embodies the spirit of the Navajo people but also contributes meaningfully to the preservation of their lands and culture.

Our motivation to apply for a Solve Fellowship is deeply rooted in our commitment to entrepreneurship within the Indigenous climate resiliency space; we see the immense value in pursuing market-based solutions to some of the most urgent challenges of our time. Our solution encapsulates this ambition by seeking to blend the artistry and cultural heritage of the Navajo people with innovative, entrepreneurial solutions meant to enable long-term climate resiliency in Indian Country. Our commitment to developing a novel-yet-sustainable market-driven approach to climate resiliency work underscores our compatibility with Solve. We believe that our solution can be a model for how entrepreneurial ventures can both create successful economic enterprises while addressing critical social issues—an idea core to Solve's work.

Embracing Entrepreneurship and Market-based Solutions

Our team is driven by a belief in the power of entrepreneurship to effect significant, lasting change. We recognize that the challenges of climate change, particularly as they impact Indigenous communities, demand innovative solutions that transcend traditional approaches. By applying to Solve, we are seeking to harness its rich ecosystem of resources, mentorship, and networking to refine our entrepreneurial skills, sharpen our market strategies, and elevate our project from concept to impactful enterprise.

Technical Support and Capacity Enhancement

Solve’s tailored capacity workshops and technical support resources are vital to our journey. These offerings will equip us with the necessary tools and knowledge to navigate the complexities of bringing a market-based solution to a traditionally under-capitalized domain. Whether it's refining our product design, enhancing our production processes, or looking at better ways to implement our conservation initiatives, the technical and capacity-building support from Solve will be instrumental in our growth as entrepreneurs in this space.

Legal Guidance and Strategic Market Insight

Navigating legal frameworks and understanding market dynamics are crucial for the success of any entrepreneurial venture, particularly one that intersects with cultural preservation and environmental conservation. Access to Solve’s legal resources and market insights will empower us to make informed decisions, protect our intellectual property, and strategically position our products in the market. This guidance is indispensable for our team as we aim to create a sustainable business model that also addresses climate change and biodiversity loss in one of the most culturally sensitive regions in the country.

Networking and Collaborative Opportunities

The opportunity to connect with a diverse network of impact-minded leaders and entrepreneurs through Solve is invaluable. This community will not only inspire us but also provide practical advice, potential collaborations, and the encouragement needed to persevere in the face of challenges.

Beyond Funding – A Partnership for Impact

While financial support is critical to kick-starting and sustaining our efforts, our application to Solve is motivated by more than just funding. It is the prospect of entering a partnership that champions entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges, offering a platform for our team to contribute to the dialogue and action around Indigenous climate resilience. We see Solve as a catalyst for our growth as entrepreneurs committed to making a tangible difference through market-based solutions.

My connection to the Navajo Nation is foundational to our project. I was born and raised on the reservation into a family of traditional Navajo sheepherders. This personal background is complemented by my significant professional experience in Indigenous healthcare, having served two different tribal nations in Indian Country. This experience has provided me a comprehensive understanding of the interconnections between indigenous health, environment, and community resiliency—and gave me an understanding of the role market-based solutions can have in enhancing quality of life on American-Indian reservations.

I currently live and work on the Navajo reservation, in a role focused on developing climate resiliency strategies for local tribal communities. This role involves direct engagement with community members, climate policy research, pursuit of grant funding opportunities for direct climate resiliency work, and coordinating community-based implementation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change. This blend of personal heritage and professional experience underpins my connection to the Navajo Nation.

Our solution looks to innovate within the Indigenous climate resiliency space by melding traditional Navajo cultural heritage with contemporary environmental conservation efforts through a decoupled-revenue model. By utilizing artwork inspired by the Navajo Nation’s endangered species, we not only raise awareness and funds for climate resilience projects but also foster a deeper connection between the community and their natural heritage—utilizing the medium of art as a conduit.

Innovative Approach

1. Cultural Integration: Unlike conventional environmental initiatives, our solution aims to generate revenue by directly foregrounding traditional Navajo cultural elements, stories, and symbols into products, then using proceeds from those products to freely pursue community-driven conservation efforts. This approach strengthens community engagement and autonomy over their lands while promoting the preservation of both natural and cultural heritage

2. Art as a Catalyst for Climate Resiliency Work: We leverage art to transform public perception and behavior towards climate change and biodiversity loss. By creating and selling merchandise like enamel pins, calendars, postcards, and stickers, we offer tangible ways for individuals to support conservation efforts, turning art consumers into conservation advocates. Decoupling our revenue source from the long-term climate-resiliency work we want to do also gives us much more flexibility in approaching that climate resiliency work. While it may be hard to directly monetize habitat restoration work, it's a much easier barrier of entry to sell a product and use those profits to subsidize the work we really care about.
   

3. Sustainable Revenue Model: Our business model aims to generate a sustainable funding stream for climate resilience efforts on Navajo lands. The revenue from art sales will directly finance projects such as habitat restoration and the creation of educational materials, creating a self-sustaining loop of conservation resources.

Catalyzing Broader Positive Impacts

Our innovative fusion of art, culture, and conservation has the potential to inspire similar initiatives within other Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. By demonstrating the effectiveness of culturally-integrated decoupled-revenue approaches to environmental projects, we can encourage others to explore creative avenues for conservation, leading to a more engaged and proactive attitude towards environmental stewardship across various Indigenous cultures and regions.

Changing the Market/Landscape

Our solution has the potential to shift the market towards more culturally conscious and environmentally sustainable products. By showcasing the demand for merchandise that carries a deeper cultural and environmentally-conscious message, we can influence other local businesses to consider similar approaches, prioritizing products that support environmental and cultural preservation efforts. This shift could help encourage broader market changes, allowing the value of goods to also be measured by their impact on conservation and cultural integrity as opposed to purely their profit margin.

In short, The Hummingbird's Promise represents a critical innovation at the intersection of Indigenous culture and environmental conservation. Through its unique blend of cultural relevance, art-driven engagement, and a decoupled-revenue model, our solution not only addresses the pressing issues of climate resilience and biodiversity loss on Navajo lands but also offers a replicable model that can transform climate-conscious conservation efforts more broadly by taking better advantage of existing orthogonal market dynamics.

Our solution is predicated on a theory of change that posits that connecting artistic and cultural initiatives promoting community engagement to tangible environmental outcomes can be an effective way to approach climate resiliency in traditionally under-capitalized communities. By intertwining Navajo cultural heritage with modern climate resiliency and conservation efforts, we aim to catalyze a shift towards greater environmental stewardship within the Navajo Nation while providing the necessary economic framework to make that stewardship sustainable. Below is a breakdown of our theory of change:

Activities

1. Production of Navajo Biodiversity-Inspired Merchandise: Creating and selling artwork (enamel pins, postcards, stickers, calendars, etc) inspired by Navajo lands and their biodiversity.
2. Community Engagement and Education: Hosting workshops and working with the community to inform our designs in order to create marketable products while providing climate resiliency information to local community members.

Outputs

1. Increased Awareness: The art-inspired merchandise serves as a tangible reminder of the community’s rich biodiversity and the threats it faces, increasing public awareness and concern for environmental issues.
2. Community Mobilization: Through educational efforts and direct engagement, the community is mobilized to participate in and support conservation activities.
3. Funding for Conservation Projects: Sales of merchandise provide a steady stream of funding for implementing practical conservation projects on the ground in collaboration with community-based organizations.

Outcomes

1. Enhanced Climate Resiliency: The direct conservation efforts will lead to tangible improvements in habitat health and biodiversity, contributing to the overall resilience of Navajo lands to climate change.
2. Strengthened Cultural Connection: The integration of cultural heritage into conservation work reinforces the community’s connection to their environment and traditional practices, fostering a stronger sense of identity and stewardship.
3. Empowered Community: Increased awareness and engagement empower the Navajo community to take an active role in conservation efforts, leading to sustained environmental advocacy and action.

Notes on Supporting Evidence

• Third-party research: Studies have suggested that conservation and research approaches that incorporate cultural elements are more effective and sustainable long-term. Using traditional ecological knowledge and understanding the interplay between cultural diversity and ecosystem biodiversity, for example, have been recommend as key means to enhance efforts to protect biodiversity and ecosystem health across a variety of biomes (Castille et al., 2017; Pretty et al., 2009).

• Past Projects: Our previous work, specifically the Four Sacred Mountains project, demonstrated strong community engagement and positive feedback with respect to culturally-conscious environmental artwork. This community responsiveness highlights a desire for solutions that respect, reflect, and incorporate Navajo heritage, especially as they relate to Navajo lands and environment.

In essence, The Hummingbird's Promise seeks to leverage the unique intersection of art, culture, and climate-oriented action to engage the Navajo community in critical conservation efforts. By doing so, we not only aim to directly impact the health of Navajo lands but to also foster an economic framework that can support a community-wide ethos of climate-resilience stewardship long into the future.

Our solution's primary impact goal centers on advancing community-driven climate resiliency work within the Navajo Nation, with a secondary focus on establishing an economic framework to underpin and support such resiliency efforts, particularly those aimed at biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, and climate change mitigation.

Primary Impact Goal: Advancing Community-Driven Climate Resiliency Efforts

• Indicator: Increased capacity of the Navajo community to implement and sustain climate resilience projects, measured by the number of projects initiated and maintained annually.
• Indicator: Enhanced community knowledge and practices around climate change adaptation and mitigation, assessed through direct community engagement.

Secondary Impact Goal: Developing an Economic Framework to Support Grass-Roots Climate Resiliency Work

• Indicator: Total revenue generated from nature-inspired merchandise sales able to be dedicated to funding climate resiliency projects, tracked through annual financial reports.
• Indicator: Number of annual climate resiliency work opportunities directly supported by revenue from product sales; this would include large projects such as a habitat restoration project we were able to help support financially, or small projects like being able to fund the installation of climate adaptation-oriented technologies like heat pumps into single-family reservation homes.

Monitoring and Evaluation Approach:

Our approach to tracking progress involves a basic monitoring and evaluation scheme, incorporating basic revenue data with qualitative community feedback from the projects we are able to support. This includes regular assessments of project outcomes and regular financial analyses to gauge the sustainability and replicability of the economic model we develop.

Summary

In aligning our work with broader sustainable development goals, we not only address specific local challenges but also contribute to global efforts against climate change. This dual focus ensures that our solution not only supports the Navajo Nation in becoming more resilient to climate impacts but also models a sustainable economic framework that can be replicated in other communities facing similar challenges. By prioritizing community-driven climate resiliency as our primary impact goal and developing an economic model to support it as our secondary aim, we ensure that our solution has a profound and lasting effect on the Navajo Nation's ability to withstand and adapt to the challenges posed by climate change.

Our solution makes the most use of internet-based commerce platform technology; this technology is what would enable the marketing and sale of our products over the internet. This approach significantly broadens our reach to potential consumers while minimizing the operational costs associated with reaching those consumers.

Commerce Platform Technology: Leveraging the power of online commerce technology that is able to integrate product listing, sales processing, inventory management, and customer interaction into one seamless system is critical to making a small-scale endeavor like ours work. This technology allows us to efficiently manage a small-scale commerce effort from the Navajo Nation, directly connecting our products with a diverse audience from around the world interested in supporting our environmental conservation efforts through the purchase of art-based merchandise.

Digital Marketing: In addition to commerce technology, our solution will employ digital marketing tools to enhance our visibility and engage with our target market effectively. Through social media advertising, email marketing, and search engine optimization, we can maximize our exposure to potential supporters worldwide. These digital marketing strategies are cost-effective, allowing us to allocate more resources towards direct product development.

Digital Art Creation: While traditional artistic skills will be at the core of our product designs, the use of digital art creation tools streamlines the production process. These tools enable the rapid development and iteration of designs, ensuring that our merchandise can be both high-quality and culturally authentic while also enabling us to be responsive to dynamic changes in market demand.

Modern Silversmithing: Additionally, we want to explore advances in 3D metal printing technology with the potential to revolutionize approaches to Navajo silversmithing, enabling us to turn our designs and art product ideas into high-quality in-lay pendant jewelry that is reminiscent of the work of traditional Navajo craftsmen, but that can scale much more effectively to meet market demand.

In summary, our project leverages modern commerce platform technology and digital marketing to efficiently reach and engage a global audience. This technological approach should enable our small-scale project to have a significant impact, supporting climate resilience efforts within the Navajo Nation through the sale of uniquely designed art merchandise.

We operate primarily in the southwest United States.

Depending on how well we can market our product, we'd love for sales to target the entirety of the domestic market of the US and Canada, with proceeds going directly to fund grassroots climate resiliency work directly on the Navajo Reservation.

We anticipate a team of two part-time staff.

We've been working on this idea in some shape or form for about 4 years, since the early days of the pandemic. The earliest publicly available work we have testing this idea comes my team's first collaborative art project: Views of Dook'o'oosłííd, the Sacred Mountain of the West.

This work was released under a permissive open-source license, and subsequently re-posted to social media for broader reception.

We want our project to demonstrate a deep commitment to embodying diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in all aspects of our work as we recognize these principles as crucial for our long-term success. Presently, our lead artist—while not Navajo—brings a valuable perspective and skill set to our initiative, especially as an accomplished color theorist and background painter. This in itself is inherently valuable and this project could not exist without her. However, we are still actively seeking to enhance our team's diversity by collaborating with other Navajo and other Indigenous artists from the Southwest region. This expansion aims to not only enrich our project's cultural authenticity and creativity but also to directly engage the communities we intend to serve, ensuring our solutions are grounded in the lived experiences and aspirations of those communities.

Our DEI strategy involves creating opportunities for Indigenous artists to lead and contribute to our project, thereby minimizing barriers to opportunity and ensuring a more equitable platform for all team members. By doing so, we aim to foster a work environment that is not only welcoming and inclusive but also representative of the diversity we celebrate. Our collaboration with Indigenous artists will also enable us to bring new designs to market, directly benefiting climate resilience efforts within their home communities.

Looking ahead, our goal is to establish a sustainable economic model that supports and amplifies the voices of Indigenous communities facing climate resiliency challenges. Expanding our artistic pool to include more Indigenous artists is a critical step towards achieving this goal, aligning our project with broader efforts to ensure equity, celebrate diversity, and promote inclusion across the environmental conservation and climate resiliency landscape.

Our business model is designed around the dual objectives of supporting impactful environmental conservation efforts while generating sustainable revenue to support these missions. At the core, we hope to engage in the production and sale of artistically designed merchandise inspired by the biodiversity of Navajo lands, initially focusing on the critically endangered species within the region. Our key products will include calendars, enamel pins, postcards, stickers, and other forms of physical media that carry the essence and beauty of these species as envisioned by our lead collaborating artist, Courtney. In essence, our business model is built upon the principle of leveraging art to drive environmental conservation, creating a sustainable cycle

Value Proposition

• Impact
  The primary value we offer to our beneficiaries, which include the Navajo community and the wider ecosystem, is the promotion of climate resilience work and biodiversity conservation. By raising awareness through art, we aim to inspire a deeper connection and commitment to environmental stewardship.

• Revenue
  From a revenue perspective, our customers are individuals and organizations interested in supporting environmental conservation efforts through the purchase of our nature-inspired merchandise. The sales of these items generate unrestricted funds that can be directly reinvested into our climate resilience work on Navajo Lands.

Operational Approach

Our approach to providing these products and services involves several key steps:

1. Collaboration with Artists
   We partner with artists who share our vision and commitment to conservation in Indian Country. Through these collaborations, we look to transform the indigenous lands themselves into compelling art pieces that resonate with a climate-conscious audience.
2. Production of Merchandise
   Leveraging the artwork created, we produce high-quality, environmentally friendly merchandise.
3. Sales and Distribution
   Our products are made available through online platforms and select local retail outlets on the reservation. We also hope to engage in community events and collaborations with environmental organizations to widen our reach and impact.
4. Strategic Reinvestment into Product Design and Production with Dedicated Allocations to Conservation Efforts
   A portion of revenue generated from sales will be directly allocated to funding on the ground environmental projects on the Navajo Reservation through a network of community partners. Among other efforts, we hope our work can fund: habitat restoration, investment in the development of local community gardens, implementation of weather station monitoring arrays for long-term climate data collection, heat pump procurement and installation for local community members to replace existing wood fire heating stoves, purchase of data access to remote emissions monitoring services for the tribe via providers like GHGSat, and the creation of Navajo-language educational materials focused on climate resilience to better engage older tribal community members. The remaining non-allocated portion will be reinvested in the business to generate new products to pursue greater sales growth.

Customer Appeal

Climate Resiliency Support: Our art merchandise will offer a direct avenue for customers to support environmental efforts, specifically catered towards work done in Indian Country.

Cultural and Educational Impact: Beyond their beauty, our products will educate on climate resilience and the significance of preserving Navajo biodiversity.

Our financial sustainability plan is centered on the "Service Subsidization" model; in our case, we aim to sell Navajo biodiversity-inspired merchandise to an external market, then move proceeds to the space we want to have the largest impact in. We hope to use the revenue generated from our art sales to directly fund grass-roots climate resiliency work within the Navajo Nation. This split approach allows us to pursue business activities we have the greatness confidence can succeed, while still remaining in touch with our priority social objectives. This model was chosen in part due to an intimate understanding of the nature of economic development in such a rural area of the country—and in recognition of what has always been a critical source of income in traditional Navajo life: art. Whether it was our sandpainters, our chanters, our silversmiths, or our rug weavers, the Navajo have always relied on arts as a critical source of income for centuries; we hope to show that that economic model is still viable, and that it can be used fund the critical climate resiliency efforts our nation now needs in order to make sure our culture survives a changing climate.

While we are in the early stages of implementing this model, initial feedback to our open-license artworks and experience in this line of work generally gives us confidence that we have a strong potential for success. In the long term, we anticipate that sales of our merchandise, coupled with targeted fundraising and grant applications, will cover our expected expenses and enable us to expand our efforts. Our commitment to this model is driven by a belief in its potential to create a sustainable funding mechanism for critical areas of work that have been traditionally under-capitalized, supporting the Navajo Nation's long-term environmental and cultural preservation goals.