INDIGENOUS INGENUITY PUBLISHING

The problem I am solving is that there are not nearly enough Native American engineers and scientists! I am working with the U.S. college and high school population with hopes of expanding to Canada. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Native Americans comprise only 0.4% of all engineering bachelor's degree recipients, 0.3% of the engineering workforce, and 0.1% of all engineering faculty. I am one of those few Native American engineers. I have not seen a culturally relevant engineering example in a textbook or homework assignment in my eight years of engineering school. As a student, I have summarized over 25 engineering, math, and science classes through colorful notes that I was constantly asked for by my friends to help them understand the classes. As someone with ADHD and Dyslexia, I am also a visual learner, and I have not found a single textbook or supplement material that is visually appealing to assist in the learning process. A typical engineering textbook is dense, black and white and can be unnecessarily technical and dry. In general, engineering and science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) fields have historically been white het cis upper-class male-dominated. Despite Indigenous peoples having been innovators, engineers, artists, and scientists since time immemorial! However, how can we expect Native students to see themselves as future innovators if they do not see themselves in the engineering textbooks they are forced to use? That is where Indigenous Ingenuity Publishing comes into play. I am also choosing physical publishing because many reservations do not have a reliable internet connection, but I plan to have a downloadable PDF/ Kindle version available, too. The best part is that my products will be relevant not only to Native American engineering students but also to all engineering undergraduates in the U.S., especially those who are visual learners and those who have neurodiversity, such as dyslexia and ADHD. There is no reason why engineering concepts should not be fun and culturally relevant. According to the National Science Foundation, about 40% of freshmen choose fields in science and engineering; that is approximately 120,000 students a year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, that could benefit from these books. Native American students see themselves in examples, and nonnative future engineers learn about Native engineering design problems through these supplementary books. 

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My solution is a publishing house called Indigenous Ingenuity Publishing. This is a Native American-owned and operated publishing company that specializes in books in STEAM fields that use Indigenous Culturally Relevant examples. We cannot have future cohorts of Indigenous MIT Solvers without current students succeeding in their STEAM fields and youth becoming interested in engineering and science and seeing how it can improve their and their families’ lives. I plan to start with the 14 essential topics needed to pass the Civil Fundamentals of Engineering exam as 14 separate books. Civil and Environmental Engineering is my specialty, and I have notes on over 25 textbooks summarized throughout my eight years in engineering school to turn into visually appealing graphic books. I have a science graphic design and publishing background to assist with this goal. The problem examples will be Native American culturally relevant in engineering books for the first time ever! For example, instead of a civil engineering example simply asking for sight difference for a road with specific conditions, an example in this reference book would ask, “The road to your auntie’s house is being paved, and you have been asked to design it! Given that the road to her house is at a 6% downgrade and the average speed your aunty drives is 20 mph, what stopping distance is required so she can safely stop in time if a rez dog jumps on the road?” There is no reason that engineering should not be more visual, fun, and culturally relevant. If students can see themselves in engineering books and how their STEAM degrees can impact their community, it can help motivate their imagination and ability to see themselves graduating. These books will not replace the primary course textbooks but help simplify intimidating concepts for visual learners and assist in tutoring Native American students while still being relevant and helpful to all STEAM students. From the success and learning process of the first 14 books (3 per year), scaling will happen to expand to other fields of engineering, art, and science, where I will build a network of Native American STEM educators and graphic designers where I can combine their skills to create more book topics. By pairing Native American STEAM experts and artists, I can help support other Native business owners. The goal is to eventually expand to the Canadian audience, where the main difference would be converting the units from imperial to metric. The technology used would be InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Heyday Publishing, which has published one of my previous books and is an independent, nonprofit publisher founded in 1974 in Berkeley, California who, supports California Indian cultural renewal and explores the state’s rich history, culture, and influence. It will also advise me. 

The target population of Indigenous Ingenuity Publishing is all Native American high schoolers and college-aged students who are interested in STEAM and those enrolled in college-level engineering programs in the U.S. with the expectation to scale to expand to Canada later. Out of the over 118 college classes I have taken, with the majority being in engineering-related fields over ten years, I have taken detailed summarized notes that I can now turn into visually representative materials to supplement dry and overly complex mainstream engineering and science textbooks. According to the National American Indian Education Association, there are over 459,000 AI/AN student in the K-12 public school system nationally. If these students were evenly distributed, 38,250 would be seniors. Engineering undergraduates in the U.S. According to the American Society of Engineers, approximately 622,502 full-time undergraduate students are enrolled in engineering each year. My target audience each year would be the Native American high schoolers and all engineering undergraduate students, with new cohorts entering college each year and with eventual expansion to a Canadian market. Indigenous Ingenuity Publishing will have a target audience of Native American high school seniors and approximately 18,500 engineering undergraduates. However, it will benefit all engineering students as a colorful, simplified engineering reference text does not exist. Having a simple reference guide will make engineering less intimidating to Native American students, and the culturally relevant examples will help students understand how becoming an engineer can be helpful to their communities. The examples in the book’s problems will be diverse to all regions of the US and Canada. Some examples may be about salmon and dams, while others may be about buffalo, and still others can be about alligators so that no one tribal region feels excluded. I will work with individuals from vast tribal backgrounds to copy edit the work to make sure the examples are culturally sensitive and accurate. 

I grew up on the Yurok reservation, and after witnessing the largest fish kill in West Coast history, I wanted to learn how to stop that cultural disaster from ever happening again. That is why I obtained a civil engineering degree at Portland State and a master’s in environmental engineering focusing on water resources and hydrology from Stanford. While in engineering school, I realized how, despite being in the ninth largest urban Native population, I was the only Native American in all my engineering classes. So, I ran for and was elected to the American Indian Science and Engineering Society’s (AISES) Region 1 Rep, responsible for AISES chapters in four states and two Canadian territories. I was also president of Portland State’s AISES chapter for six years, during which time I had the privilege to hear about and understand the struggles of Native American students in STEAM fields. Because I have been a part of the AISES community and built long-term relationships, I am at an advantage in recruiting Natives from the U.S. and Canada to become future partners in designing reference books for their unique topics. I also pursued Native American business classes such as Stanford Native Studies Entrepreneurship for Social and Racial Equity to be well situated in the future to develop socially responsible and sustainable businesses. Through that class, I started an education business where I did graphic design to summarize complex information about salmon and lamprey for the public through B2B and B2C educational pamphlets. Out of over 120 cousins, I was the first one to obtain a master's degree and a degree in engineering, so I feel like it is my responsibility to share what I have learned with my fellow tribal members. I am personally well situated to translate complex information because I make sure my dad, who is fully Native and grew up by the reservation and has only a high school education, can understand what I write about. If he understands, then my other tribal members can. I have an international network of Indigenous scholars in the STEAM fields who can assist me in my aspirations. While working as an engineering intern for the City of Portland, I also assisted in writing STEAM textbooks for K-12 minority populations I taught in afterschool programs after work. I specialize in distilling complex scientific ideas into digestible material. I understand this is a significant hole in the STEAM book market, as I am constantly asked for my engineering notes and told that people wish there were a book of my notes they could buy. Engineering at a more significant level does not need to be complicated. We, as Native Americans, have been designers, scientists, and engineers since time immemorial and yet have zero representation in STEAM textbooks and reference books. I grew up with zero Native role models in engineering, and I want to make sure no Native kid ever feels that way again through Indigenous Ingenuity publishing.

After taking two business classes, including one in a Native Studies course at Stanford, I decided in 2022 to start my first business, where I learned how to file to start a business, how to find a manufacturer, how to set up B2B and B2C relationships and advertise to buyers. I then grew my scientific graphic design skills by taking Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop classes and taking more petite figure-making jobs. I am still in my 20s, so between school, work, and culture, it has taken me a while to get to a place and create a business plan I can be confident enough to pitch and start working on. I come from a low-class background and am not from a per-cap tribe, so I have difficulty finding starting money for the initial production costs. Bootstrapping does not work well when everyone I know as a Native American college student is struggling financially, even to pay rent and food monthly. If I can secure some initial funding, I can apply it to the first of 12 prints of the first series, allowing me to sell one and then apply to more grants and have some income from those initial sales and proof of concept. I have made a previous salmon information educational pamphlet available on my website ThompsonTeachings.com where I had some lessons learned in that experience with DPI quality and paper type that I will bring into this business. 

I have wanted to be a part of SOLVE since I was at SOLVE in 2018, where SOLVE at Standing Rock was introduced, and I believe it eventually transformed into this program. I have had close friends such as Stephanie Barron, Danielle Forward, and Danielle Boyer as previous SOLVERS, and Danielle especially has told me how beneficial it has been for her. As a young Native American businesswoman, the support and connections are priceless in helping me help other Native students. I want to be a part of SOLVE because I want to inspire, be a good role model, train to be a good future ancestor, and have other Natives grow and learn along with me. So many of my cousins are entrepreneurs, even if they do not have a patent, a registered business, or know how to make a website. I want to bring those skills into my community and say, “Hey, Cousin Brook can do it, so I can, too! And she is going to help me.” It was at SOLVE in 2018 that I learned what scaling was, for example. I took that and learned how to write a business plan and apply it to my design, starting with a single guidebook, then a collection, then a different series, and then expanding to multiple countries. If I can gain that knowledge from attending the conference, imagine how much I could grow with direct support and coaching! I mainly need advice on improving my B2B market, invoice supply filling, and trademark process.  Supporting me as a solver will impact me as an individual and thus my whole community because I will take that knowledge back with me and share it tenfold! I want to be a solver because I have a dream, a plan, and I am a leader, but I need support and coaching in the technical business part and initial funding, which is why Solve is a perfect partner for me.

Team lead Brook Thompson is enrolled in the Yurok Tribe and also Karuk and was an elected regional student representative for the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), which is an international (US and Canada) nonprofit organization focused on substantially increasing the representation of Indigenous peoples of North America and the Pacific Islands in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) studies and careers. The team lead is in the same group, Native American STEAM students, as the community she is attempting to reach. 

There are no engineering visual-graphic reference books or textbooks with Native American-specific examples. Thus, there is no current publisher with that niche. Those with my skill set as someone with civil engineering knowledge and understanding also practice science communication graphic skills. As well as Native American Disabled Two-Sprit Engineering Women who own businesses are few and far between.

Below are theoretical scenarios with Outcomes 1 and 2 leading to one less Indigenous engineer and Outcome 3 being with Indigenous Ingenuity Publishing Solve Idea.  

Outcome 1: A Native high schooler named Jason does not understand engineering and why a job in the field would help his home. He never sees himself in any engineering problems, only White people fixing skyscrapers and massive bridges that the reservation does not have. Thus, he does not apply to college to be an engineer and thus does not become one, which could have benefited their community. 

Outcome 2: A Native college freshman named Sequoia enrolls in engineering because she wants to be a role model and help her tribe. She enrolls in an introduction to statistics course, but the textbook is a small print, 20 lb book, which is very dry, complex, has no color, and has confusing images where then are any at all. She did not have AP classes on her reservation; the sheer size and complexity of the material are intimidating and hard to digest, and she cannot find clearer, more visual examples online. When her professor draws free-body diagrams on the chalkboard, what is supposed to be a car looks more like a potato. She gets overwhelmed and frustrated, so she decides to drop engineering and chooses chemistry or nursing, with many clear supplementary reference guides already available. 

Outcome 3: A Native high schooler named Dakota has no AP classes but is looking at college majors to go into; they pick up a book the library has on engineering hydrology from Indigenous Ingenuity Publishing. They find an example about designing and removing dams on a lake with salmon like there is in their tribe. They would like to know more about how to remove dams to help water nutrients flow, so they go into an engineering degree. During the engineering degree, they struggle with dense textbooks. Still, they know they can purchase a reference guide to help explain and summarize complex topics they see in their textbook to help guide them through it without being as intimidating. They stick with their classes. After graduating to become a registered engineer, they must take the fundamentals of engineering exam. However, they know each exam section was covered in the 12 reference manuals they purchased to help them learn through their 4 years of college. They review the reference books to help them study and pass! Now, Dakota works as an engineer for their tribe and gets to design how to take down dams. Dakota's younger cousins are amazed and want to know how to do a similar job, so Dakota inspires them to go into engineering.  The goal of my product is to increase the number applying for and retention rate of Native engineers.

I want to put a survey at the back of the books asking what people thought. If I could get 50% of readers who were encouraged to look more into engineering because of the book, were helped in a class because of the book, or the books helped them pass their fundamentals of engineering exam each year with at least 25% of respondents being Native American or First Nation I would be extremely happy with those results.

Drawing products such as Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. As well as an IPAD for procreate. Wix as an online webstore host. Products will be printed on 100% recycled Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper with naturally sourced glue, and paper sizing and print run lengths were calculated to reduce waste and avoid overproduction with zero plastic waste postage and packing materials.

West Coast USA (Alaksa, Washington, Oregon, California) with plans to expand to the rest of the US and then Canada. 

US as a whole.

One, full-time.

Ten years. Eight years of notes, three years of skill building.

I plan to use Indigenous-identifying artists for the graphics and editors from the American Engineering Science and Engineering Society membership. Those who mentor me at Hey Day, the printing house company, and possibly the editors will be the only non-Indigenous people working on the teams. Since this job can be done with minimal physical work, I would ideally like to give preference to those with disabilities that keep them from maintaining a more typical job. 

I will do B2B through the network that HeyDay Publishing has accumulated and B2C through an online website. I look to businesses like Tony's Chocolonely and Cotopaxi for their sustainable business models. The initial costs will be registering the business, starting the website, copywriting, copyediting, engineering math checkers, and printing costs. Longer-term costs will include paying professional Native American artists. When I am the main person doing the engineering writing for the first 14 books, there will be a larger profit margin. Still, typically, I would expect when selling wholesale that the company receives a 15% profit margin, the author a 10% profit margin, and the illustrator an initial flat price rate per page. These margins would be higher for ebooks and B2C via the website, but I would expect fewer sales on those fronts than wholesale buyers. The structure of this business as it changes from a single-person company to a larger framework after the initial 14 books. I would also like to put money towards advertising in the future but need more guidance on advertising. 5% of my current company's net profits get donated to local organizations that help salmon and lamprey; I would like to act like a B corp right now and work towards it in the future. 

Through my previous product, the salmon and lamprey informational pamphlet, I sell B2C and B2B. I started selling them about 6 months ago and have sold about 250 of the 300 initial prints with asks for larger buys for conferences and events around ocean conservation. I make a 64.29 % profit on the pamphlets for B2C and 21.43% on wholesale. I have offers for more B2B clients, but I wanted to make some updates to quality and some text placement based on what I saw on my initial printing. I also want to upgrade how I keep track of B2B customers and sales. So, I am ensuring that I do not grow too quickly until I can get a solid foundation and maybe hire a virtual assistant since I am also a Ph.D. student. I was considering using Virtual Gurus, whose founder is an Indigenous woman and part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. I have received funding for my previous venture of starting the salmon stuffed animals, a card game of local Pacific Northwest fish, and the educational pamphlets through four different grants of $500, $5,000, and $5,000 through Stanford, American Fishing Society, and Youth Speaks Art Grant respectively since starting the business formally in 2022. This current project of a publishing house with the 14 reference guides has been an idea of mine for the last 10 years, but this is the first time I am asking for money to start it now that I have successfully started one business and have learned how to conduct myself after real-world experiments and trial, error, and growth.