How Think Indian Was Born

The Think Indian campaign was created in collaboration with the American Indian College Fund's Portland, Oregon-based longtime advertising partner Wieden+Kennedy, which has volunteered its creativity to the Fund to advertise its mission to educate American Indian students. Wieden+Kennedy is known for its signature work for Nike, Target, and Coca-Cola, and was named Adweek's 2008 Global Agency of the Year.

Wieden+Kennedy has partnered with the Fund for more than 15 years to tell the story of the American Indian College Fund, American Indian students, and tribal colleges. This distinguished body of work has been printed in magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, U.S. News and World Report, Fortune, Marie Claire, Outside, and appeared on television and radio.

The Think Indian public service advertisement campaign is the next chapter of the American Indian College Fund's story. Rooted in the stories of real students at our tribal colleges, the campaign shares how the unique cultural thinking of American Indians is being preserved at tribal colleges, and that inner cultural landscape is being used to solve modern-day problems for all people.

Tribal college students are combining Native cultural knowledge with modern business, science, and other studies to come up with solutions for modern diseases, preserving modern habitat, develop sustainable businesses and cities, and implement sustainable agricultural practices on this planet—and in space. Our students have the responsibility to preserve the Indian way of thinking for the next generations to solve age-old and modern problems. It is not only our students that benefit when you make a donation to the American Indian College Fund—the entire world is a better place thanks to Indian education.