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Rebecca Adamson
Co-author of The Color of Wealth:
The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide

“ I realized that self-determination means not negotiating a better contract with the BIA, but walking to the table with our own money. That’s why I founded First Nations Development Institute in 1980. Our number one priority has to be control of our own assets.”
-- from The Color of Wealth

 Rebecca Adamson, a Cherokee, is Founder and President Emeritus of First Nations Development Institute (1980) and First Nations Oweesta Corporation (1996). Currently she is founding First Peoples Worldwide, the only indigenous-led and –controlled organization working globally to bring indigenous assets under the control and for the benefit of indigenous communities.

She has worked directly with grassroots tribal communities and nationally as an advocate of local tribal issues since 1970.

She asks, “Indigenous people are five percent of the world’s population and their land spans 18 to 24 percent of the world’s land surface. With all those resource assets, how can we be the poorest of the poor in every country where we reside?”

She is a trustee of the Calvert Social Investment Funds, and in that capacity she initiated the only investment product whereby investors could invest directly in low-income communities. These investments, called “community notes,” have brought over $689 million into affordable housing, small businesses, and micro-finance.

Rebecca has received several awards for her work. In 2003 she was one of ten honorees of the National Women’s History Project. In 1996 she was awarded the Council on Foundations Robert W. Scrivner Award for creative and innovative grant making, and she was awarded the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development’s 1996 Jay Silverheels Award. She is the only indigenous person ever to win the Schwab Social Entrepreneur Award.

When Rebecca gave the keynote address at United for a Fair Economy’s “Defending the Dream” conference in 2005, she not only got a standing ovation at the end, but her talk was twice interrupted by the 200-person audience jumping to their feet and cheering.