Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund
Blackfeet Reservation, Montana
To support the Blackfeet Plastics Recycling Program
The Blackfeet Recycling Program, a project of the Development Fund, is an ambitious three year old recycling program with big hopes. "The goal of the project is to recycle absolutely everything," says Director Elouise Cobell, "from cars to milk bottles." The program was founded when middle school students determined to reverse the accumulation of garbage on reservation lands and make a viable business out of the process. The Recycling Program, which has successfully established metals, paper and glass recycling, is currently seeking to expand its collection materials to include #2 plastic HDPE, the high density polyethylene used to make milk, juice and water bottles. The Recycling Program will, shred, and sell the plastic shavings to Blackfeet Writing Instruments Inc. for molding into pen ink barrels. This process will create the only recycled pen manufactured in the US.

Corporation of Newe Sogobia/ Western Shoshone National Council
Western Shoshone Territory, Nevada
To support the Western Shoshone Spring Gathering
Yucca Mountain, the heart of the Western Shoshone Nation, is a place of deep spiritual significance to Shoshone and Pauite peoples.Because of U.S. nuclear testing in Nevada, the Western Shoshone Nation is the most bombed nation on earth. They suffer from widespread cancer, leukemia, and other disease as a result of fallout from more than 900 atomic explosions on their territory. High level nuclear waste would only add to the current health risks this community faces. The Western Shoshone National Council strives to raise the profile of their fight for tribal survival as a traditional people while uniting the community and broader public to protect these inherent rights. The nuclear industry proposes moving the lethal waste across the country by truck and train to Yucca Mountain, the heart of Newe Segobia/Western Shoshone Nation, and the traditional Council is actively resisting this plan.

Dine; Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (CARE)
Navajo Reservation, Arizona
To carry out the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 2000 (RECA) Initiative
For over a decade Dine; CARE has battled various environmental injustices in the Dine; bii Kaya-the Navajo Reservation. These battles range from fighting incinerator proposals for Dalton Pass, to preserving the trees of the Chuska Mountains to winning compensation for uranium-impacted families. "We are committed to bringing justice to our people. Our people have provided invaluable service not only to mining and processing the materials of war, but to actively help win the World Wars. We are working for changes to ensure justice in compensating miners, millers and families and others who were intentionally and unknowingly exposed to radiation from living in close proximity in the uranium industry. Our people are living amongst toxic uranium tailings waste dumps and are dying from cancer. The federal government has a moral and legal responsibility to help rebuild our people and our land...." Dine; CARE

Eastern Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining Concerned Citizens of T'iists'ooz Ndeeshgizh
Navajo Reservation, New Mexico
To increase organizing efforts regionally and continue administrative challenges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commision.
ENDAUM, is a grassroots campaign representing the Dine; people of the Eastern Navajo Agency in Crownpoint and Churchrock. Their primary purpose is to stop new uranium mining that would use a chemical solution to extract uranium form a high quality aquifer that supplies drinking water for more than 10,000 residents of the Eastern Navajo Agency.

Environmental Justice Foundation
Skull Valley Reservation, Utah
Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), is coordinating a legal battle on behalf of tribal members against the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They seek to declare PFS's lease with the Tribal Council "null and void" on the grounds that the provisions of the lease were never put to a referendum vote or disclosed to tribal members. The Skull Valley Goshute Reservation is located about 70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, and inhabited by 30 families. Their land-base is literally surrounded by toxic industries, including biological and chemical weapons plants and incinerators, an aluminum chloride plant deemed the most polluting in the country, and a low-level radioactive waste dump. The tribe was never consulted about the siting of any of these facilities that collectively have left them impoverished and poisoned. Now, a consortium of twelve powerful utilities, impatient about the slow progress of the Yucca Mountain Project, is desperately trying to construct a private radioactive waste dump on the Skull Valley Reservation. A handful of brave and committed tribal members are resisting in an effort to protect what remains of their ancestral lands.

Flying Eagle Woman Fund
New York, New York
To sustain the legacy of Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa
A foundation created to commemorate and further the work of Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa (1957-1999) to strengthen the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples by maintaining and reinforcing self-reliance, traditional cultures and ways of life. Ingrid, a member of the Menominee Nation, was among the most prominent Native American leaders of her generation.

Indigenous Environmental Network
Bemidji, Minnesota
General support
IEN is a network of grassroots indigenous groups throughout North America working to forward environmental justice. It is an alliance of grassroots Indigenous Peoples whose mission is to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth from contamination, and exploitation, by strengthening, maintaining, and respecting the traditional teachings and natural law.

Indigenous Women's Network
Austin, Texas
General support
IWN is an alliance of more than 400 Native women and women's groups across North America and the Pacific Islands. This Network was created in 1985 to support the self-determination of Indigenous women, families, communities, and Nations in the Americas and the Pacific Basin. In the process of promoting self-determination, IWN supports public education and advocacy for the revitalization of our languages and culture, elimination of all forms of oppression, the attainment of self-sufficiency, and the protection of Mother Earth for future generations.

The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
Leavenworth, Kansas
General support
This group seeks the release of Native activist Leonard Peltier from prison. Peltier was convicted for participating in the deaths of two FBI agents during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. His trial and subsequent court proceedings were riddled with FBI misconduct.

Midwest Treaty Network
Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Towards advocacy and movement building to oppose both Crandon Mine and the Arrowhead power line.
The Midwest Treaty Network is an alliance of Native and non-Native groups supporting Native American sovereignty in the western Great Lakes region. They have worked against metallic sulfide mining projects, particularly the proposed Crandon Mine next to the wild rice beds of the Mole Lake Sokaogon Chippewa Community and upstream from the pristine Wolf River.

Native Action
Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Montana
To support work to stop Coal Methane Gas extraction in the Powder River Basin.
Where the hills rise and fall on the banks of Rosebud Creek in Montana, Little Wolf, Lame Deer and other Northern Cheyenne chiefs found a refuge for their people. These 500,000 acres of ponderosa pine, deep valleys, beautiful rivers and rolling plains is homeland to the Tsetsestah, the Beautiful people. Like much of eastern Montana, the Northern Cheyenne Reservation is underlain by coal fields and as a result, the community has had to fight a pitched battle over three decades to protect their ancestral homeland from the devastating impacts of strip mining.

Ohngo Guadedah Devia
Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, Utah
Towards organizing and public education work to stop the Skull Valley nuclear waste dump in Utah.
Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia is a grassroots group working to stop a limited liability corporation called Private Fuel Storage (PFS) from constructing a parking-lot-type high-level nuclear waste dump on the reservation.

Pimicikamak Cree of Cross Lake
Cross Lake, Manitoba, Canada
To support the organizing and advocacy and for the 'Hands Across the Borders' conference.
The Pimicikamik Cree are planning "Hands Across the Borders" conference in 2001. The conference will trace the impacts of proposed electric projects from north to south and emphasize the relationship between First Nations in Canada and Native Nations in the upper Midwest and resource and energy consumption on both sides of the border. The conference is particularly timely because of current efforts to restructure the Midwest's electricity industry, creating conditions that could favor Manitoba Hydro's "cheap" electricity over renewable resources. The five dams on the Nelson River (which runs through Cross Lake on its way to Hudson Bay) together are responsible for submerging 3.3 million acres of land, including large tracts of boreal forest and extensive animal habitat. Fish from the Nelson River, a staple of the Cree diet, have been contaminated by the methyl mercury utilized in the hydro production. Pregnant women, elders and children must severely limit their intake or risk dire health consequences. These conditions have made the Cree environmental refugees in their own lands.

Pueblo of Zuni
Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico
To support for an effective public awareness campaign.
The Zuni Salt Lake is a natural and spiritual resource of great significance to the Zuni people. The Zuni are working to protect Zuni Salt Lake from a proposed strip mine that would disturb burials, shrines and places of worship. The Salt Lake is the residence of their deity the Zuni Salt Mother. Since pre-Columbian times, the Zuni have been making uninterrupted annual pilgrimages to honor her, make offerings, seek her assistance, initiate new members of religious societies, and gather her sacred salt.

Three Fires Society
Mount Pleasant, Michigan
To promote the creation of Mide Lodge-based Ojibwe language materials. This society works to protect Ojibwe language and lifeways by operating culture/spiritual-based education programs and facilitating four seasonal Midewiwin ceremonies in several locations of the Anishinabe, Great Lakes Area.