The ongoing impacts of colonisation have created deep structural inequities in so-called Australia, where economic systems continue to benefit from the dispossession of First Nations peoples and lands. As a result, non-Indigenous people hold disproportionate access to wealth and power, while many First Nations community-led initiatives remain under-resourced despite generations of advocacy, action, and solutions on the ground.

Philanthropic investment in First Nations-led organisations remains deeply inadequate. Reports indicate that 7% of funding goes to organisations servicing First Nations people and only 0.5% of funding reaches First Nations community organisations directly.

Addressing colonial injustice requires more than acknowledgement—it calls for a tangible commitment to the redistribution of wealth and power. This means resourcing First Nations communities on their terms, supporting long-term self-determination, and shifting capital into the hands of those who have been systematically excluded from it.

First Nations Futures was established to address the economic barriers that First Nations community organisations face within funding systems. Since 2020, we have set out on a path to create a First Nations economic justice organisation which challenges traditional funding systems, builds movement and mobilises people towards material solidarity and wealth redistribution, and forge a new pathway to support and resource First Nations community-driven initiatives creating intergenerational change.

After two years of development, we launched in August 2023 with a funding platform, and have now diversified our model of funding to corporate partnerships and an endowment fund - calling on individuals, corporations, and philanthropy across so-called Australia to redistribute wealth, step into material solidarity, and drive intergenerational impact.

We are informed by those values that keep us in right-relationship with Country, and guided by a collective of First Nations people that hold integrity and intersectionality. Our model ensures First Nations governance, priorities, and ways of working, and enables First Nations organisations to access resources on their own terms and drive solutions defined by their communities.

First Nations Futures is here to reimagine futures grounded in economic justice, where our communities have the resources to drive our own futures, on our own terms, on our own lands.