NDN Collective Announces Community Action Fund Grant Partners

December 15, 2022

NDN Collective Announces Community Action Fund Grant Partners

“NDN Collective is honored to invest in the self-determination and leadership of these organizations, collectives, organizers, and cultural practitioners. They are on the frontlines defending our communities from resource extraction, combating the polluters fueling climate change, and standing up for the human rights of Indigenous peoples."

For Immediate Release: December 15, 2022

Rapid City, SD – Today, NDN Collective announced awardees of the 2022 Community Action Fund. The fund’s intention is to move money into the movement space to help further Indigenous Peoples’ agendas as it relates to the defense, development, and decolonization of our Peoples and Mother Earth.

This fund provides urgent response resources to frontline movements and community organizers working to defend their lands, including a focus on climate justice and racial equity. Grants of $15,000 to $30,000 are directed to those most impacted by local problems and ensuring that  resources and decision-making lies with those most affected by the results, and most  equipped to solve immediate challenges. Direct community action is supported, including community organizing, amplification of community voices, and a wide variety of tactics imperative to shifting the political and financial systems impacting Indigeous communities.

“It’s critical to resource grassroots efforts. The knowledge and power of the people closest to the issues and threats that we face must be fortified,” said Gaby Strong, NDN Foundation Managing Director. “There are so many communities across Turtle Island – aka North America – working to defend their lands from extraction and their people from exploitation. The Community Action Fund is one important way of supporting those change efforts.”

“NDN Collective is honored to invest in the self-determination and leadership of these organizations, collectives, organizers, and cultural practitioners,” said Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of NDN Collective. “They are on the frontlines defending our communities from resource extraction, combating the polluters fueling climate change, and standing up for the human rights of Indigenous peoples. NDN Collective continues to operate with the foundational principle that radical change will require a major redistribution of resources.

“Liberating resources from the field of philanthropy and moving them to the communities who have been stolen from to create those resources in the first place is essential to building an equitable world.”

2022 Community Action Fund Grant Partners: 

  • Kenia Ines Herandez Montalvan with Centro de Derechos Humanos Zeferino as fiscal sponsor
  • Congreso Nacional Indígena Península de Yucatán
  • Consejo Regional Indígena y Popular de Xpujil
  • International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
  • José Guillermo Vélez Román
  • Koʻihonua
  • Luis Enrique Ortiz González
  • Sisquoc Goat Packing with Meztli as fiscal sponsor
  • Apache Stronghold with MICA Group Inc. as fiscal sponsor
  • Guainia Taino Tribe of the US Virgin Islands with Opi’a Taino International, Inc. as fiscal sponsor 
  • Piikanii Lodge Health Institute
  • The American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council with Rural Coalition as fiscal sponsor 
  • Society of Native Nations
  • Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation
  • Indigenous Elders and Medicine Peoples Council with SPIRET Foundation as fiscal sponsor          
  • World Peace and Prayer Day with SPIRET Foundation as fiscal sponsor
  • Tewa Women United
  • The Pueblo Action Alliance with The SouthWest Organizing Project as fiscal sponsor
  • Tohono O’odham Sonora
  • Dakota Canoe Journey with Unkitawa as fiscal sponsor 
  • YTT Northern Chumash Nonprofit

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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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Press Release | NDN Collective Announces “Community Action Fund” for Indigenous Frontline Organizers

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