Native Communities Program's Spring 2010 Building Resilience Grantees

  • American Indian Center
    Chicago, Illinois
    United States

    Project Support: Urban Explorers Prairie Restoration and Native Foods Garden Project
    Funds will go to strengthen the AIC’s Urban Explorers Project, a unique culturally-based, community science program for Native youth. Youth will expand their work by engaging in local prairie restoration along the neighborhood Metra train tracks and growing Native heritage foods in a community garden.

  • Black Mesa Water Coalition
    Flagstaff, Arizona
    United States

    Project Support: Black Mesa Reclaimed Lands Solar Farm
    Funds will support projects that involve two resources deeply tied to the unique bio-cultural landscape of the southwest and the Navajo people: the sun and the sheep. The development of a Mixed Breed Wool Carpet Company and the Black Mesa Reclaimed Lands Solar Energy Farm will support traditional Navajo lifestyles and allow for the continuation of this life-way into the future.  The Solar Energy Farm is a way to take lands ravaged by unsustainable industries & create sound development that will utilize a bountiful renewable resource - the sun.

  • California Indian Environmental Alliance
    Berkeley, California
    United States

    Project Support: Cache Creek Watershed Tribal Sampling and Cleanup Project
    The Project is a partnership between Big Valley Rancheria, Elem Indian Colony, Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians, Robinson Rancheria, CIEA and the Department of Toxics Substance Control. The Project re-establishes local traditional food within the Cache Creek Watershed through cleanup and restoration of traditional fish habitat, edible traditional plants and wildlife and the protection of culturally sensitive areas. 

  • Corporation of Newe Sogobia
    Austin, Nevada
    United States

    Project Support: Western Shoshone Pinyon Project
    Funds will support the Western Shoshone Pinyon Project, part of an ongoing effort to retain Native gathering rights.  Project activities include organizing a gathering to discuss how harvesting rights were lost, methods to reclaim the harvest tradition and strategies to protect the forest from corporate interests. Two traditional pine nut ceremonies will be held and educational materials about this ceremonial food will be created.

  • Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture
    Flagstaff, Arizona
    United States

    Project Support: Kwang’wa Tsoki Orchard Restoration Project
    Funds will support the Kwang’wa Tsoki Orchard Restoration Project in creating a viable community-based and sustainable fruit tree nursery.  A hoop house and shade structures for fruit tree graftings/seedlings will be built this year. Orchard restoration will be utilized as a way to train and engage Hopi youth and community members in a local food economy.

  • Indigenous Community Enterprise
    Flagstaff, Arizona
    United States

    Indigenous Community Enterprise’s mission is to work directly with Indigenous communities to identify economic opportunities that foster responsible stewardship of the land and enhance self-reliance. Funds support an ongoing Straw Bale Project to design and build culturally appropriate homes, and a newly launched Native Food Project, to revitalize and promote traditional local food systems. 2010 funds will support ICE's work with the National Forest, using small diameter ponderosa logs to make traditional hogans for Navajo elders and is planning to expand this program to include young Navajo families.

  • Indigenous Training Resource Council
    Lakewood, Colorado
    United States

    Project Support: Traditional Kiowa Camp
    ITRC is coordinating a Traditional Kiowa Camp to reconnect tribal youth with traditional foods and life ways. Funds will be used to purchase food and pay stipends to teachers and camp assistants. Tipis, camping equipment and other supplies are provided in-kind by the local community.

  • Little Earth of United Tribes
    Minneapolis, Minnesota
    United States

    Project Support: Little Earth Urban Farm
    Funds will be used to involve youth age 7-11 in the Little Earth community garden.  Incentives will be given for youth who participate in tending a youth plot and participating in activities around food justice.  The youth will showcase what they learn through visual art projects (painting, drawing, and theater). The teen group will act as mentors to the younger youth and programming for both age groups will be geared toward stimulating pride in and responsibility for the garden.

  • Nepantla Arts
    Minneapolis, Minnesota
    United States

    Project Support: The Zenteotl Project
    Zenteotl is a community engagement project dedicated to honoring and restoring Mexihca (Aztec) organic gardening methods, traditional dance, arts and oral histories, especially those surrounding Corn.  Youth and families from the central Minneapolis neighborhood sow and harvest heirloom blue Corn seeds and other traditional plants. Funds will support the piloting of an annual Corn Festival - Festival del Maiz - to celebrate the significance of Corn for many cultures and promote involvement in sustainable gardening practices.

  • Pawnee Seed Preservation Project
    Pawnee, Oklahoma
    United States

    General Support
    The Pawnee presently have a seed bank that houses traditional seeds that were cultivated in their original homeland of Nebraska and they are working to expand beyond the seed bank status in order to restore their ancient crops. Funds will be used to purchase supplies needed to garden, travel to Nebraska, attend in-state trainings and provide storage for seeds/produce.

  • Red Willow Community Growers Cooperative/Tierra Lucero
    Taos, New Mexico
    United States

    General Support
    The Red Willow Community Growers Cooperative is farmer’s cooperative responsible for both onsite agricultural production and revitalizing the community’s agriculture. Funds will support an assessment of the operating efficiencies of the site’s renewable energy systems and subsystems, including a biomass heater, a photovoltaic-powered field and greenhouse drip irrigation water system and solar thermal heater. RWCGC will be installing a real-time data gathering system as well as optimizing the efficiency of those systems and subsystems.

  • Regranting Fall Deadline!

    Now announcing our Building Resilience in Indigenous Communities grantmaking Fall deadline! All applications must be submitted by October 17th. For details, please see http://www.honorearth.org/grantmaking/guidelines

  • Seventh Native American Generation (SNAG)
    San Francisco, California
    United States

    Project Support: SNAG BioBus
    Funds will support the waste vegetable oil conversion of a SNAG BioBus along with youth education on alternative fuels and climate change. The BioBus will take urban Native youth to rural and reservation communities to learn practical knowledge about climate change mitigation/adaptation and the restoration of Indigenous cultures.

  • Slim Buttes AG Development Project (Running Strong for American Indian Youth)
    Chadron, Nebraska
    United States

    General Support
    A community-based, cooperative effort to raise food across Pine Ridge Reservation, the Slim Buttes organic gardening program assists over 300 Oglala families in producing local, healthy food on their own land each year. Funds will be used toward labor costs for twelve tractor operators & helpers across the reservation. 

  • Sustainable Nations
    Trinidad, California
    United States

    General Support
    Sustainable Nations is working to promote the health of Native Nations through renewable and other appropriate technology training and support.  This year, the organization is working with the Yurok community to organize micro-hydroelectric trainings and installations and develop a farmers’ and traditional trade market on the Yurok reservation.  Funds will be utilized to host the micro-hydroelectric training and engage in community planning for the market.

  • Tusweca Tiospaye
    Pine Ridge, South Dakota
    United States

    Project Support: Permanent Shade - Preserving Natural Resources
    In addition to hosting the Annual Lakota Dakota Nakota Language Conference, attended by over 400 participants each year, Tusweca Tiospaye provides language and cultural programming to Pine Ridge reservation youth.  Funds will be used to build a permanent shade "test site".  The shade would be used as an outdoor classroom, a gathering place for elders and women during Sun Dance, and for shelter to aid in ceremonies during the winter months.  The permanent shade would replace the need to annually harvest timbers on the reservation, a natural resource that is in short supply.