Establishing an Organizational Black & Indigenous Reparations Fund

Mitsui Collective Statement on Indigenous Peoples’ Day — Establishing an organizational Black & Indigenous Reparations Fund

As a people with an ancient and diverse web of diasporic lineage tying us to homelands from around the world, we know firsthand the trauma of severed and strained connections to land and place. These relationships to land, place, nature, and community are central to Mitsui Collective’s pedagogy as a Jewish organization committed to building resiliency through embodied practice and racial equity. As a non-profit organization centered around racial equity and based in the United States, we must contend with the dual “original sins” of oppression enacted at the founding of this country: the violent genocide and displacement of the peoples native to this stolen land, and the violent theft and enslavement of those stolen from their homeland to be sold and exploited for generations in this one. These oppressions continue to this day and must be addressed with urgency and collective power.

Leading up to Juneteenth (June 19) 2020 Mitsui Collective was one of over 100 Jewish organizations to sign onto Not Free to Desist: an open letter from Black Jews, Non-Black Jews of Color, and our allies to Jewish Federations, Foundations, Organizations, and Initiatives. Core to the obligation on centering racial justice and social equity as an explicit pillar of our organization is “an investment in solidarity and support initiatives between JOC and non-Jewish POC communities” and “the creation of a fund to explicitly support anti-black racism initiatives and policy change in the communities we operate in.”

In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day today — October 12, 2020 / 24 Tishrei 5781 — Mitsui Collective is therefore following up on our commitment, in part, by creating a 2020 Black & Indigenous Reparations Fund to be distributed in approximately equal amounts to Indigenous-led and Black-led organizations and efforts:

• Mitsui Collective will contribute up to $1,800 in matching funds — roughly 1% of our 2020 operating budget — i.e. $3,600 including our contribution alongside matched donations, to be dispersed in sum.
• Additional contributions above this amount will be directly added to the fund and its dispersal. 

In the Jewish calendar, we have just begun the sixth year of the seven-year Shmita cycle. In the Shmita year, Jewish tradition compels us to acknowledge a collective sense of relationship to land, resources, and ownership through allowing agricultural lands to lay fallow and the release of economic debts. Inherent to the Shmita ethic is likewise a consideration of the unpaid debts we still owe — to the land, to each other, and to other peoples — debts that in a sense may never be fully repaid, yet from which we must not turn our attention nor desist in our efforts to address and to heal. 

Just as in the weekly Jewish tradition of celebrating and observing Shabbat, the day of rest, one cannot fully immerse themselves in Shabbat without having prepared in the days leading up to the seventh day, we will not be ready for the fullness of the Shmita year without having prepared for it in the years before. This reparations fund is but a first step in this process of teshuva — of repair — and Mitsui Collective commits to continuing in our ongoing efforts leading up to and during the next Shmita year and well beyond. 

Specific Next Steps: 

Relationship Building

Mitsui Collective is a young organization and also a relatively new transplant to the area. As such, we are at very early stages of forming and strengthening the relationships that must be the backbone of any serious work centered on racial equity and repair. While this is lifelong work, we commit to prioritizing local BIPOC relationship building on both the individual and organizational level over the next several months, with a particular emphasis on Black and Indigenous communities outside the Jewish community alongside our ongoing engagement and community building for Jews of Color and multiracial Jewish families. 

Collection and dispersal of funds 

By the end of 2020 we aim to designate a minimum of $3,600 — $1,800 or more raised alongside our own committed match funds — to be distributed in approximately equal amounts to Indigenous-led and Black-led organizations and efforts. Emphasis will be placed on recipients in Mitsui Collective’s local cultural and ecological watershed — e.g. in the Cuyahoga River Valley including and surrounding Cleveland, and in the greater Northeast Ohio region.*

Report-back & Assess

Both as follow-up to donors and as part of our public commitment, Mitsui Collective will document and share the amounts and recipients of donations from our Reparations Fund, alongside other helpful information around process and relationship as appropriate. Moving into 2021 we will assess the strength and success of these efforts in tandem with BIPOC-led work and wisdom, and make appropriate revisions.

As our liberation is bound up in the liberation of all peoples around the world, may we together build a world in which all are free. 

With Love and Liberation, 
The Mitsui Collective Team 

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Additional Resources: 

• Indigenous Peoples’ Day Toolkit — from Illuminative (shared by our friends at Edot: Midwest Regional Diversity Collaborative)
• Honor Native Land: A Guide and Call to Acknowledgment — US Department of Arts and Culture 
• Land Acknowledgements Through a Jewish Lens — Koach Baruch Frazier, Samia Mansour, and Yoshi Silverstein
• COVID-19 Resources for Indian Country — Native Governance Center

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*According to Lake Erie Native American Council, Tribal representation in Northeast Ohio includes: Acoma, Algonquin, Anishinaabe, Apache, Aztec, Blackfoot, Catawba, Cayuga, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chickasaw, Chippewa, Choctaw, Comanche, Cree, Creek, Crow, Dakota, Delaware, Dine’, Eskimo, Hawaiian, Hidatsa, Ho-chunk, Hopi, Inca, Iroquois Confederacy, Itza Maya, Kickapoo, Kiowa Apache, Kiowa, Lakota, Laguna, Lipan Apache, Lumbee, Mayan, Mohawk, Mohican, Muskogee, Nez Perce, Nakota, Northern Cheyenne, Odawa, Ojibway, Omaha-Ponca, Oneida, Onondaga, Osage, Ottawa, Paiute, Pawnee, Ponca, Pueblo, Seminole, Seneca, Severn Ojibwe, Shoshone, Sioux, Taino, Ute, Yuchi, Yuma, and Zuni.