Lori Pourier (Oglala Lakota) is the President of First Peoples Fund (FPF). FPF provides direct support to Indigenous culture bearers, artists and community-based organizations located in tribal Nations. Since 1999 First Peoples Fund has directly supported a total of 4,649 Native artists to advance their development as entrepreneurs and agents of change because artists are a uniquely powerful means of healing and strengthening tribal communities. FPF has distributed $6.1 million in grant funds, fees, and honoraria to more than 410 artists from 35 states and 133 tribal nations through our fellowships, awards, and other programs. Through regrants to community-based organizations, we have reached more than 30 tribal communities with $1.5 million. 

In 2016, under Ms. Pourier’s leadership and in partnership with Artspace and Lakota Funds, Rolling Rez Arts was launched – a state-of-the-art mobile arts space, business training center, and mobile bank on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. That same partnership will open the Oglala Lakota Artspace in late 2020, the reservation’s first community arts center. The 8,500 square-foot facility includes learning, studio, gallery, and gathering spaces, as well as a bank and garage for the Rolling Rez Arts bus. Oglala Lakota Artspace will provide a rich slate of year-round arts programming on Pine Ridge including curriculum-based workshops and performances, workshops based in intergenerational knowledge sharing, film and sound production, writers’ conferences, artists’ residencies, financial literacy workshops, and much more. 

Lori has been involved in the arts, social justice, and community development fields for 28 years. She has dedicated much of her efforts on reconnecting Native communities to their cultural assets and bringing new philanthropic resources to Indigenous artists and culture bearers directly. In addition to the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, she is a recipient of the 2013 Women’s World Summit Foundation Prize for Creativity in Rural Life and a recipient of the Native American’s In Philanthropy, 2013 Louis T. Delgado Distinguished Grantmaker Award. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Jerome Foundation and the Women’s Building Project at the Novo Foundation.