{"id":203031,"date":"2026-04-20T07:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T07:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203031\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T07:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T07:15:11","slug":"turtle-island-community-capital-refinances-high-interest-loan-for-indigenous-new-york-fashion-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203031\/","title":{"rendered":"Turtle Island Community Capital refinances high-interest loan for Indigenous New York fashion hub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/impactalpha.com\/wp-content\/themes\/impactalpha\/assets\/images\/share_gift_icon.svg\"\/><br \/>\n                                Gift this article  <\/p>\n<p>                            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Relative_Arts_Manhattan_Lucia_Vazquez-28.jpg\" width=\"100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n                            Korina Emmerich and Liana Shewey at Relative Arts<br \/>\nCredit: Luc\u00eda V\u00e1zquez                         <\/p>\n<p>Rhode Island-based Turtle Island Community Capital has <a href=\"https:\/\/turtleislandcommunitycapital.org\/updates\/replacing-extractive-financing-with-fixed-capital\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">closed<\/a> a $40,000 loan to Relative Arts, a brick-and-mortar shop and open studio in New York City\u2019s East Village that showcases contemporary Indigenous fashion and design. The loan will pay off a high-interest line of credit Relative Arts took on to cover costs for last year\u2019s first-ever Indigenous New York Fashion Week. <\/p>\n<p>Vendors and artists at the event needed to be paid before event invoices came in, leaving the Relative Arts with no option but to use a short-turnaround lender. That lender, OnDeck, charged an effective interest rate of around 80%. TICC\u2019s loan will cut monthly payments by more than 40% and replace revenue-based repayment with a fixed monthly structure. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cDebt has been used against Indigenous communities so many times that it\u2019s really hard to rebuild the type of trusting connection that allows people to imagine a world where debt can be supportive instead of extractive,\u201d TICC\u2019s Alexander Sterling tells ImpactAlpha. Relative Arts generates around $150,000 in annual revenue and gives 70 Native artists a place to sell their work.<\/p>\n<p>Indigenous finance<\/p>\n<p>Native-owned businesses <a href=\"https:\/\/nativephilanthropy.org\/blog\/2020\/11\/17\/native-americans-are-2-of-u-s-population-but-receive-0-4-of-philanthropic-dollars\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">receive less than four-tenths of one percent<\/a> of philanthropic funding and <a href=\"https:\/\/skodenventures.com\/news\/this-indigenous-led-venture-fund-targets-creative-entrepreneurs-across-the-southwest\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">four-thousandths of one percent<\/a> of venture capital. In Rhode Island, 96% of Native-owned firms have no employees, \u201cnot because they don\u2019t want to, but because they can\u2019t get access to the type of capital or training that would allow them to scale,\u201d Sterling says. <\/p>\n<p>TICC is one of a handful of Native-led CDFIs operating between Boston and Washington, DC. Its investor base includes the Colorado-based Oweesta Corporation, and a 0% recoverable grant from the Hidden Leaf Foundation. Sterling, a member of the Ramapo Lenape Nation who spent nearly a decade in small business and solar lending before moving into Indigenous finance, is seeking to raise $40 million. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to be the lender of first resort for folks doing startup work that aren\u2019t ready for VC funding,\u201d Sterling said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gift this article Korina Emmerich and Liana Shewey at Relative Arts Credit: Luc\u00eda V\u00e1zquez Rhode Island-based Turtle Island&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-203031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}