For Immediate Release: December 14, 2023
Rapid City, SD – Today, NDN Collective announced the 2023 Community Action Fund (CAF) has officially rematriated $500,000 USD to 25 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.
In the words of a 2023 Community Action Fund Grantee Partner: “We stayed focused on Defending our Land – and our community. For us, this is a matter of life and death.”
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 Nicole Yanes, Director of Grantmaking 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.”
Interested in applying for this grant?
The Community Action Fund grant cycle will reopen on January 11, 2024!
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NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.
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