Empowering Indigenous Voices and Plurality within the Gitcoin Community

Hello world!

My name is Mathilde Everaere. I am a world citizen born in France that has the deep honor to learn, work and live among Indigenous Communities from South America, and mainly Brazilian Amazonia, for 8 years, starting in 2015.

Through my background in International Cooperation, it quickly appears both important and natural for me to bring and translate Indigenous Representative into the global scene, while I believe we have so much to learn back, share and create with peoples that preserve not only more than 80% of our global biodiversity but also maintain alive a whole universe of knowledges and wisdoms based on other relationships to life in general (and thus to nature, society, economy, community, culture).

Along the different missions, debates, projects and events I have been involved with, one of the main topics that appeared on my path, thanks to @Dagda, is the potential of Web3 in connection to Indigenous Cultures to create cross-cultural positive ecosystems for global changes.

From there, I got introduced to Gitcoin with @Mycelia, and felt the calling to bring the Indigenous Voices louder into the community.

Something that has been recognised for the 1st Gitcoin Citizens, and that I’am willing to keep doing for future Gitcoin Round, and future Gitcoin events. 

Retroactive Work 🔙

Since I connected with the Gitcoin community, I have been working on how to bring more Indigenous Voices into it, starting on the Gitcoin Radio where I translated exchanges between Indigenous Leaders and the Gitcoin community during the 1st and 2nd edition of the Radio.

Two Gitcoin Rounds where I co-hosted and have mediated various spaces with Indigenous guests of 7 different ethnic groups and profiles _ from ‘cryptowarriors’ to Indigenous NFT artists, videomakers, digital influencers, decentralized organization founders and healers _ in order to open the debates on current challenges through Indigenous perspectives within Web3.

Link: https://twitter.com/mycelia_uni/status/1699958688025387426?s=20 

Also from 02 to 04.06.2023, we have been invited, with Indigenous guests of 5 ethnic groups of Brazil engaged in NFTs projects, to present Mycelia on the main stage of NFT Brasil 2023.  A conference at which we presented briefly Gitcoin and QF as aligned tools to empower Indigenous Communities in Web3. 

Something we want to do more of, both in the Digital and Physical, feeling the importance of promoting indigenous participations in future events as discussed during our participation in Funding the Commons Paris (July 2023) and other Web3 events along the recent Climate Week in NY (Sept 2023, and yes, I just missed the GreenPill NY events!😅).

I also helped for the last GG18 to on-board three Indigenous projects by translating their proposal to English, namely:

CIM : A Decentralized Indigenous Committee, Living Libraries - Wisdom A.LIVE, Ciborguindígena : Indigenous is the future; 

While explaining Gitcoin and QF in Portuguese https://www.wtfisqf.com/

Planned Work 🔜

• Keep working to translate and facilitate the translation of Indigenous Projects into Gitcoin Round by assisting future Indigenous Projects interested by this new way of funding;
• Facilitating exchange with translation between Indigenous Peoples and the Gitcoin Radio Community; 
• Working with @Dagda on a grant using Grant Stack focuses only on Indigenous Public Goods to show how these tools can be used to empower Indigenous Communities while respecting their right to self-determination;
• Looking to engage discussion with Gitcoin to see the possibility of connecting Indigenous Leaders to future Gitcoin events to accelerate even more the regen movements; 

Conclusion

At a time when the inclusion of diversity is one of today's greatest challenges, let's strengthen Indigenous Voices in Web3 together!

Indigenous Peoples are more than just a satellite community to consider vaguely, they are at the forefront of climate solutions and have been doing 'public goods' since the dawn of time, so helping them to be closer to the Gitcoin community makes complete sense to us.