NDN Collective Rematriates $700,000 to Indigenous Frontlines Through 2024 Community Action Fund

For Immediate Release: December 18, 2024

Rapid City, SD – Today, NDN Collective announced the 2024 Community Action Fund (CAF) has officially rematriated $700,000 USD to 23 Indigenous frontline organizers, communities, and movements working to defend Mother Earth and Indigenous Peoples’ rights across Turtle Island (North America) and related Island Nations.

The grants are being directed to those most impacted by issues such as climate change, resource extraction, and systemic racism, to ensure resources and decision-making lies with those most equipped to address immediate challenges. CAF supports community organizing and movement building work designed to shift the political and financial systems that negatively impact Indigenous communities.

One 2024 Community Action Fund Grantee secured a rare environmental justice victory with support from the CAF grant, causing an operator to drop plans to expand an oil storage terminal next to an elementary school. “The halted expansion prevents increased toxic exposure for an already disproportionately impacted student body,” the grantee partner shared.

The CAF prioritized resourcing frontline, grassroots, community-based direct actions including: protest camps set up to defend Indigenous territories from pipelines, mining and other extractive projects; protection of sacred places; strengthening traditional governance systems to address violations from the state; release of political prisoners; addressing police brutality; community security culture efforts for restorative justice; and climate disasters relief and mutual aid efforts in Maui and Guam.

“We are honored to rematriate these resources through the Community Action Fund, to bolster Indigenous people, communities, and movements mobilizing to defend their rights and territories and respond to climate disasters in their homelands,” said Thomas Kenote, Program Officer at NDN Collective. “Building a world that allows Indigenous people to thrive requires a massive redistribution of wealth to people on the frontlines of the fight for justice and freedom. We must continue liberating money that was made off the lands and on the backs of Indigenous and Black people, to continue the fight for safety and freedom for all.”

“We are deeply grateful for the incredible work Community Action Fund grantee relatives have done to protect, defend, and mobilize their communities for their lands, water, and collective well-being. Through our grantee relatives’ direct actions and climate responses, we see the acts of love and the building of Indigenous power throughout Turtle Island,” said Helen Aldana, Program Officer at NDN Collective. “We are honored to have and continue to rematriate resources to these amazing Indigenous peoples, communities, and movements who know the solutions for a better future where we all thrive.