She does a lot of work with NTU and India, Indiana University. And so she was talking to the dean of Navajo of DNA studies at Navajo Technical University. And he was saying it would be so great to have a music program here. And so she talked to her daughter and she was like, hey, like, do you want to come to Navajo Nation and like do a music program for like a week to the Juilliard during that time, so she got a bunch of her friends and they went out and did it. Um, and we're still a very small organization. We've been around for about like six years or so. But last year, we just got a half a million dollar grant from the lowest price um, which we couldn't have done without being sponsored by ropework. But also roadwork, has a long history with the Smithsonian, for example, one of our board members James, he used to be who I forgot what his official job title is, but he used to be a director of something at the Smithsonian. And so then the Sonian folk lives. They had done a couple of articles on heartbeat as well. So being able to utilize these connections and have more people know about heartbeat being able to have that one c three status and just having a home base of like, I've seen other sponsored projects, and that relationship of being a fiscal sponsor, and it's so much this, like domination thing of like, we need to know every single thing that you were doing with roadwork and heartbeat, it's like the relationship is so excuse me, it's so clear. And obviously we are going to them about about certain things, but there's a real trust in what heartbeat is doing. That heartbeat is able to have this freedom to really like launch their own vision of what this is what this is going to be. I mean getting that grant money has been incredible, especially post pandemic because we went a full two years without having any programming some online programming, but also Navajo nation itself was shut down because of COVID in such a you know, more real way than a lot of other spaces. And, yeah, it's just again, I just having having roadwork as a home has been like so incredible for heartbeat and heartbeat is in the process now of you know, we're taking steps to become our own nonprofit. But I think that big sister relationship will will always be there. And it's really special for both parties.
Yeah. I like that big sister relationship. Yeah, it sounds. Again, like going back to what you said earlier. It sounds like a perfect example of we're going to support you but we're going to trust where you're going because you know where you need to go better than us and back to like roadwork as a whole has to listen to the people within the community to know where you're going. So it's like, definitely you we're supporting you, but you're helping us find our way even though we are become big enough and well known enough to be in a position to support someone else. So it's definitely like that give or take.
Yeah, yeah. And I think to that, because you do deal with this with like, Grant organization is this idea of and especially for indigenous organizations, it's like, there's just so much white splaining that goes on of like, what, you know, again, like we're using money, but it's this idea where it's like, people get so specific because there's almost like this lack of trust, which indigenous people can feel immediately you know, like there's always that like, little bit of edge of just like you're not trusting us that we know what to do with our money. Or with the money I guess. Um, and so for roadwork, like not to be coming in to heartbeat and being like, our director, Sharon Nelson, she's professor of tunay studies at NTU. You know, roadwork isn't going to Sharon and being like, this is how you should be running heartbeat. Sharon is running heartbeat the way that it needs to be run because she is today and this is for her community. And it's such a great team heartbeat. I love her because I
know it sounds like a wonderful organization. And yeah, just a lot of a lot of good points that you're making. That I'm happy were brought to my attention in this conversation as well. Is there um, that wraps up my questions, but is there anything that I didn't ask about that you think is worth mentioning? About roadwork as a whole it could be SR fire um
I don't think so. I mean, I guess I will just say that I think the one thing another another idea that what I do like about I guess one thing for me is like as an indigenous person. I do feel a lot of support from the board to try to highlight more indigenous issues. And there was even talk at some point about having a sister fire in the future, highlighting different indigenous artists. Um, I think, again, I think it depends on kind. It's a plate space thing. So like, yes, you can bring in artists from different areas, but, um, wood feels really, really tied to the mission and really tied to the community that we're serving. Is that really fits inside of like the DC community. And so I'd almost rather be supporting that community and like the history that roadwork has with that community. And again, kind of giving it to somebody like B to be like, this is your show. And so how are we want to curate it curated? Rather than like pulling in people from the outside to bring into this that are based in DC. And interestingly enough, I mean, I would say that when you thinking about the opposite effect when people go to indigenous land, and then bring other people in to perform, it's kind of this idea to have like, well, there's people in our community who could be, you know, on the stage, and so why isn't that there? And so something that I would love to see is, is highlighting the indigenous community that is based in DC and really being able to bring those people into our community as well.
Yeah, I don't see anything in the way so I hope to see that a couple years that would be great. Is um, I don't know what the because I've only talked to B and Amy on that like, kind of business or like leadership side of road work, but our other leadership positions like given the people from different communities kind of given that same opportunity or is that like priority when who's making up this organization?
Um, you You mean like within roadwork or within like performances
roadwork within.
I would love to Currently I'm the only employee after Jesse left. I would love a team of people. And we're in transition right now and the pandemic was very difficult. Absolutely. And so a lot of people were really spread thin. But that's definitely some again like this is kind of my sneaky way of bringing people in is this retreat idea of okay, like, let's get all these people in and find the money and be like, hey, like, what is the roadwork that you want to see? Let's make it happen and let's pay you to be part of roadwork so that it's actually happening instead of kind of always been on the outskirts of that. Um, yeah, I love our bird so much, but it would really be great to have more people. Yeah, all right. No, I'm hopefully not with that. So yeah, it's you know, last year the curation was really between Amy and I, and I was in Hawaii during that time, and I was about to go like completely offline for a couple of weeks. Oh,
