Nika Bartoo-Smith
Underscore Native News + ICT
After living in the same house in Pendleton, Oregon for the first 18 years of her life, Summer Wildbill took a big leap post high school graduation in 2023, by moving across the country to study international relations at New York University (NYU).
“My senior year self went in really confident that it was not going to phase me at all, and I could just do a really smooth transition from reservation to the city, which was not true,” said Wildbill, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
She quickly noticed a gap in her education when it came to financial literacy and how to manage money. As she dove into research for herself, she found that this was a bigger need that she could help meet for other young Native people back home. She wanted to create a platform to help others learn about finances in an accessible way. Now, Wildbill is developing a financial literacy app in collaboration with her tribe via Nixyáawii Community Financial Services.
Summer Wildbill, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, poses for a photo on April 18, 2026. (Photo by Carrie Johnson)
Wildbill is heading into senior year this fall. Post graduation, she dreams of attending law school. She hopes to focus on Indigenous economic development on an international level.
“I’m really interested in working first with my community in economic development, and then moving more towards a federal level, and learning community specific needs, and then how that’s translated at a federal level and into policy,” Wildbill said. “And then my ultimate goal would be taking all the perspectives and being able to look at policy on an international level, especially modern, Indigenous economic development.”
Recognition in her academic career
Though still in undergrad, her career thus far has focused on economic development — through a study abroad program in Argentina, an internship with the United Nations and as a 2026 Champion for Change through the Center for Native American Youth, focusing her project on financial literacy. She was also a 2024 Remembering our Sisters Fellow.
In part because of those accomplishments, Wildbill was recently announced as a recipient for two prestigious scholarships.
In mid-April, Wildbill learned that she was selected as a 2026 Truman Scholarship recipient. One of 55 selected applicants, students had to be nominated by their institutions for demonstrating leadership, public service and academic achievement.
A few days after learning about the Truman Scholarship, Wildbill also learned that she was selected for a 2026 Udall Scholarship. The scholarship aims to highlight “future leaders in environmental, Tribal public policy and health care fields.”
“I can get so caught up in doing all the work,” Wildbill said. “[Applying for scholarships] gives me a moment to reflect on everything I’ve done and like how it’s kind of compounded over time. So that’s been really rewarding in those processes. I’m very grateful for it.”
Her work continues to inspire others in her family, like her younger sister, Claire Wildbill, who is currently a sophomore at the University of Southern California.
Claire remembers dreaming with her sister about attending school in a big city one day.
“I didn’t believe that it could actually be possible until Summer was accepted to NYU,” Claire Wildbill said. “Her going out there and being the first one in our family to do that and get accepted, get scholarships, definitely inspired me to also pursue that for myself, because her doing it showed me that I could do it as well.”
A passion for financial literacy
Being surrounded by people in a big city at school in New York, some with access to huge amounts of money, Wildbill began to think about her own financial situation. Through podcasts, books and articles, she dove into learning about financial literacy through topics like savings and investment.
This personal research quickly evolved as she realized that this information could become helpful to other young Native people.
Wildbill is part of the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Scholars Program that focuses on social justice and advocacy work. As part of the program, scholars are awarded a stipend each summer to conduct research on a topic related to social justice.
Noticing the gap between herself and other students at NYU who had more money, Wildbill formulated a series of research questions for herself: Why, specifically on reservations, is financial literacy so low? With all the different financial apps and curriculum already out there, what is failing minority groups, specifically reservations, when it comes to financial literacy?
Summer Wildbill, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, works on the financial literacy app she is creating with her tribe outside the NYU law building on April 18, 2026. (Photo by Carrie Johnson)
The summer between her freshman and sophomore year, Wildbill began working with Nixyáawii Community Financial Services, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s CDFI, to tackle this research.
“The main gap was it wasn’t actually targeting any of the emotional aspects of money, which I think is the most crucial point, especially as Native Americans, who have very strong not only historical traumas with money, but also they’re very cyclical patterns,” Wildbill said.
Using her research, Wildbill is now in the process of helping to develop a financial literacy app called NativeCents with Nixyáawii Community Financial Services and Cayuse Native Solutions.
Dave Tovey, citizen of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and executive director of Nixyáawii Community Financial Services, remembers when Wildbill first approached him and his team about creating a financial literacy app. The timing felt right to Tovey, as the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) had recently completed a strategic plan and wanted to find a way to provide more youth financial education.
He was particularly impressed with how in her research, Wildbill remarked that everything was so numbers driven, and found a need to start with a self assessment to help people determine their own personal relationship with money.
The four categories she broke it down into are: security and growth, anxious and scarcity, instant gratification, and debtor mindset.
“I used that research to write a goal based pedagogy,” Wildbill said. “The goals are about the kind of the person you want to become with building and sustaining long term wealth based on your money mindset.”
Tovey has also been grateful to the efforts Wildbill continues to put into the app development, even though she has been busy with school.
“She’s just lining up all these scholarships and out there on this high profile college experience, and like, wowee,” Tovey said. “But she carves off time for our project, happily and eagerly participating and generating some of the content and feedback we’re looking for.”
Wildbill is a contractor on the app, helping with the planning and content creation.
Her goal is to help youth feel empowered when it comes to financial decisions, and provide a resource for Umatilla youth to understand how to manage their “18 money,” the money from gaming dividends that Umatilla tribal members receive once they become adults.
As a kid, Wildbill wanted to be a teacher when she grew up so the process of building lessons, and weaving them with Indigenous stories, has been particularly rewarding, she says.
She hopes that the app will be released by the end of the summer.
“I really hope that youth in my community genuinely use it,” Wildbill said. “The whole point of it is we want it to be interactive, and we want it to be something that’s easy to access and something that’s made for [Umatilla youth] so it feels like they’re within the financial education conversation, they’re a part of it.”
This story is co-published byUnderscore Native NewsandICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest.
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