Keiko Miller: Supporting Indigenous Organizations

On March 25 at a cafe by Macalester, we interviewed Keiko Miller, the Associate Director of Program Strategy and Development for Native Sun. She has been a member of the organization since 2023 and provided insight into the many successes and challenges the Native-led organization faces, while also giving us a glimpse into her background and her work in Environmental Justice.

From the moment that Keiko was born, it seemed like she was destined to work in public policy. Growing up in Wisconsin, Keiko was surrounded by conversations about public policy and legislature. Both her grandmother and father were state legislators in Wisconsin, and Keiko joked that public policy was the main point of conversation at her family’s dinner table. She even mentioned that she had a picture of herself when she was two years old on the Wisconsin legislative floor. Through her highly political upbringing, it became clear that public policy would be her mechanism to make change in the world.

Keiko went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and majored in biology with a focus in environmental policy. Upon graduation, she participated in community engagement contributing to environmental and scientific policymaking. Eventually, Keiko returned to her education at the University of Minnesota Humphrey School to get a Masters in public policy with a focus in environmental policy. After finishing her degrees, she worked with various clients in the public and private sphere as a strategic planner and facilitator, with her most recent contract being with Native Sun.

Native Sun is a Native-Led nonprofit organization promoting energy efficiency, renewable energy, and an equitable energy transition through education and workforce training for primarily Native communities within Minnesota. The organization was founded in 2020 by Robert Blake, a tribal citizen of the Red Lake Nation and owner of Solar Bear, the only Native-owned energy company in Minnesota. Wanting to do more than represent the community through only his personal success in the reusable energy industry, Blake decided to create Native Sun as a tool for development, reusable energy education, economic development, and community building within the Native community.

Keiko explained during our interview that the economic development that sustainable energy projects offer is just as important to the community as the environmental benefits of the project. Native Sun’s projects serve to benefit indigenous people through a sustainable future and economic prosperity while hiring and training indigenous people to expand the community’s own capacity as well as provide employment opportunities for community members.

During our interview, Keiko outlined some successes that Native Sun has accomplished in the short time frame since it was created. They have put solar panels on top of government buildings, providing more reusable energy to the community and generating more jobs for Natives who otherwise would not have the opportunity to work with solar projects. Keiko also mentioned a project called Electric Nation, which “develops electric vehicle infrastructure that is connecting different travel corridors around tribal communities. It also provided some electric vehicles to the tribal governments.” This project has shown great success after recently receiving a grant to purchase electric vehicles. As of now, Native Sun provides commercial, passenger, and transit EVs to over 20 Native Nations across Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

The current project Keiko is working on is an online self-paced worker development course called Solar Workforce which will allow Native people to get job qualifications at their own pace. Native Sun recognizes that the complexity and business of people’s lives can affect coursework completion and timing.

Though Electric Nation and Solar Workforce are two of the organization’s biggest projects, they have many other operations going on as well. Their Solar Club program hopes to teach environmental concepts through a Native culture lens, raising future leaders in the community with the knowledge of the importance of renewable energy. Also, Native Sun’s Native Civic Engagement and Power-Building Profile program plans to increase Native people’s engagement in policy and representation in public offices. This program creates an opportunity for an often silenced group for more agency and voice in Minnesota.

Despite Keiko’s passion for the work that she does, there are a couple of challenges that she has encountered throughout her time at Native Sun, mainly stemming from the fact that she is not a member of a Native community herself. One of the struggles that she highlighted was writing grants on behalf of the organization. She explained that “it’s tricky because when I’m writing [and saying] like ‘oh we’ and I’m like, well, not me exactly. But we as an organization.” As an Asian-American in an organization that focuses on Native Americans, Keiko has learned how to take a step back, recognizing her privilege within her organization, and learning to listen as much as she contributes. Especially since many grants require her to write about Native Sun’s goals, she needs to make sure that the voice that she is broadcasting is the voice of indigenous people rather than her own.

Another one of Keiko’s challenges within Native Sun involves her role in the organization and her struggle to learn how to be an ally for an indigenous organization. She understands that her voice isn’t the voice of indigenous communities, so she takes on the position of an ally instead: “When you’re an ally, it involves more listening … How do you center and make sure that the voices that are the right choice are being pushed forward” “When you’re an ally, it involves more listening … How do you center and make sure that the voices that are the right choice are being pushed forward.” We were really impressed with her humility and understanding of her own privilege, especially considering her own identity.

Keiko’s cultural background has also been a challenge for her as she’s navigated through Native Sun. To her, she prefers to have events that are organized very extensively and she prefers to have order and structure when she plans. Especially when it comes to how things are planned and decisions are made, she said “I have to have humility and an openness to things being done differently than the way I might.” Throughout Keiko’s life, she’s learned to conduct projects and plan out events in a specific way, but in her time in Native Sun, she has learned how to get work done using alternative strategies.

In the realm of environmental justice, Keiko talked a bit about how she has learned to come to terms with the many problems of varying proportions that need to be addressed: “It can be really easy in the environmental world to think really big…. That’s good to have but it can be extremely unsettling because you’re going to feel like you’re not moving the needle at all. [So think about]…How did I move something on the ground or one person and what positive impact did I have? Did I make somebody’s job easier? Did I make somebody’s living situation better today?” We found this piece of advice really meaningful, and it was helpful for us to understand that the work that we do doesn’t have to change the world. By tackling small problems that affect our local communities, it’s still very meaningful to make changes on a local level.

For Native Sun, there have also been a couple of struggles that have prevented the organization from accomplishing everything that it hopes to accomplish. The first challenge relates to the opportunities that native communities as a whole have. There haven’t been many hances for Native Americans in the past to accumulate the knowledge and capital that many other racial groups have been able to. Despite these struggles, Keiko highlighted the success of Robert Blake and how his experiences have guided him to help reverse the trend of underserved indigenous populations by providing them opportunities through employment and volunteer work. In regards to how Native Sun approaches many different groups for their outreach, Keiko also spoke a little bit about how Native Sun has needed to adapt to reach many different groups and spread its message, especially since there are many different modes of communication and outreach: “You have to think for different audiences. What is their hook? What do they need to hear? What, what is their concern? Why should it matter to them? … Social media is going to be great and you’re gonna be able to do social media and you’re gonna hook the kids in and you’re gonna build up. With policymakers, you’re going to need to have your numbers, you’re going to need to have your information. You’re going to need to have a coalition of well-known people.”

Keiko highlighted the importance of messaging that is targeted to specific audiences while ensuring that the same core message of the organization is preserved. She made it clear that the underlying message of the organization should not be changed, but rather the medium and the way that it’s communicated. We definitely resonated with this point because we’ve seen advertising and information campaigns about environmental efforts that didn’t seem to be targeted at us. The understanding that Keiko brings about how information needs to be catered for each group was interesting and we admired how she brought that expertise to Native Sun.

Our talk with Keiko was very informative and eye-opening, giving us insight into, as she puts it, the “scaffolding” of the organization and what it takes to create a movement toward racial equity and renewable energy. We learned of the successes of the organization in building agency for Native people in politics and employment opportunities, as well as educating the youth on renewable energy and leadership. The highlight, however, was definitely learning from Keiko how she operates as a non-Native person in a Native organization. It was fascinating as she explained the fine line she walks between pushing the organization and its message forward while being extremely conscious and mindful to enhance the voices of the Native leaders around her instead of doing things in her traditional style. We are extremely grateful that we had the opportunity to have such a wonderful conversation with Keiko as it was both extremely informative and fun.

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