Institute · an open proposal
Indigenous Reclamation.
This page is not an operating practice. It is an open invitation to indigenous-led partners and aligned funders to figure out together whether and how this work happens. The conversation is the work.
The honest premise.
The web has alienated indigenous identity from indigenous communities. Cherokee.com redirects to Jeep. Quechua.com belongs to a clothing brand. Across thousands of indigenous names, peoples, and concepts, the namespace is held by entities with no connection to the cultures named. This is the digital pattern of physical colonialism.
The honest position.
Pillar holds an inventory of relevant indigenous-language and indigenous-concept domains, acquired with the intent of stewardship rather than commercial use. We have a thesis about what those domains could become. We do not have the right to decide what they become.
The honest invitation.
We are looking for indigenous-led partners — organizations, communities, leaders, scholars, language reclamation projects — to figure out together what this work could be. We are also looking for aligned funders, foundations, and family offices to underwrite the work the partners decide to do. We are not pre-deciding the model.
What we bring to the conversation.
Inventory. Operational capacity. Years of building web infrastructure in underserved languages. Genuine willingness to cede leadership of what gets built to the people whose names and cultures are involved.
What we are not.
Not building “the indigenous web.” Not designing programs to deliver to indigenous communities. Not the protagonist of this story.
The humility framework.
Pillar is the layer below the protagonists, not the layer above them. Every page, every paragraph, every conversation is readable through that lens. If anything reads as Pillar-as-hero, we rewrite. The conversation itself is the work; what gets built is decided by the partners whose names and cultures are involved.
If you are an indigenous-led organization or aligned funder.
Reach Brian directly. This is not a marketing form. The conversation is the work, and the partnership shapes anything that follows.
Email Brian directly →No partners are named on this page. Partnerships appear when partners give permission, on their terms, in their voice.
Questions about this page’s framing.
Why is this page so different from the other practice area pages?
Because the work it describes is fundamentally different. The other practice areas are operating practices Pillar runs — we deliver something to a buyer. This page describes an open proposal where the partners decide what gets built, on their terms, in their voice. The page is written explicitly to be read by indigenous-led organizations and aligned funders, not as marketing for a service. The schema markup reflects this: no Service schema, no EducationalOccupationalProgram schema, because nothing is being delivered.
Does Pillar have indigenous-language domain inventory?
Yes. The categorized inventory includes 8 Indigenous-language domains plus a number of indigenous-concept domains across the other language buckets. Inventory size matters less than the stewardship discipline; we are not advertising the inventory as a commercial offering. The conversation about what gets built starts with the partners.
Why aren't partners named on this page?
Premature naming is exactly the failure mode this practice is designed to avoid. Partners appear on this page when partners give permission, on their terms, in their voice — or they don’t appear on this page at all. Other partnerships (Pachakuna and others Pillar may work with on adjacent practice areas) appear elsewhere on the site when appropriate; they don’t appear here unless they have specifically agreed to be named on the Indigenous Reclamation page itself.
What would a partnership actually look like operationally?
We don’t pre-decide the operational model. A partnership might look like: a language reclamation project taking stewardship of a portfolio of domains in that language and deciding what gets built on each. Or: an indigenous-led foundation underwriting Pillar’s operational capacity to build whatever the partner organization decides. Or: a community deciding that the right answer for their domains is to release them back to community ownership rather than build at all. The model emerges from the conversation; we do not ship a template.
Are there aligned funders Pillar would route conversations to?
The aligned-funder list exists in our internal records (Lannan Foundation, Christensen Fund, Bay and Paul Foundations, Swift Foundation, Tamalpais Trust, Cultural Survival, Indigenous Environmental Network, NDN Collective, First Nations Development Institute, Native Americans in Philanthropy, Pawanka Fund, International Funders for Indigenous Peoples, and others). Critical note: this list is not a targeting list in the conventional sense. The work originates with indigenous-led organizations as protagonists and co-decision-makers; aligned funders are introduced through those partnerships, not pursued ahead of them.