NDN COLLECTIVE’S 2025 COMMUNITY ACTION FUND APPLICATION PERIOD OPENS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JANUARY 29, 2025

RAPID CITY, SD – Today, the application period opened for NDN Collective’s 2025 Community Action Fund (CAF). For the past five years, this grant has supported direct action and frontline organizing across Turtle Island (North America: US, Canada, and Mexico) and related Island Nations, including Boriken/Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands.

The Community Action Fund (CAF) furthers Indigenous Peoples’ mobilization strategies as it relates to the defense, development, and decolonization of people and Mother Earth. This $250,000 fund is available to support such efforts in 2025, with grants up to $20,000.

The CAF has provided urgent funding for efforts including Stop Cop City on Ohlone land, resisting pipelines, organizing for the release of political prisoner Leonard Peltier, protection of sacred sites, defense of lands and water, and providing resources for climate change response efforts.

The CAF is meant to provide urgent response support to those most impacted by issues such as climate change, resource extraction, and systemic racism, ensuring resources and decision-making lies with those most equipped to address immediate challenges. The CAF supports community organizing and movement building work designed to shift the political and financial systems that negatively impact Indigenous communities.

“With the escalating climate crisis displacing people across the globe – from wildfires ravaging Tongva land aka Los Angeles, to deadly floods from Turtle Island to Libya, and so much more – it is more urgent than ever to support efforts to defend our lands, waterways and peoples,” shared Tina Kuckkahn, Managing Director of NDN’s Foundation. “The courage, fortitude and determination of our people unites us with a sense of hope and solidarity, propelling us forward in the movement during these prophetic times. We are inspired by the words of one of our grantee partners:

“Our work is centered on our ancestral responsibilities and restoring balance in our communities. Our organizing brings a future to our people that is not based on money, us having to leave our communities, or a sense that what we need is outside our communities,” said Nickolas Esperanza on behalf of Altepetl Makuilojtli, recipient of the Community Action Fund grant. “Our work is to show and remind our people that everything we need is here, and when we work together, we can return to the abundance that our ancestors worked so hard to maintain.”

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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.