Description

I am pleased to recommend four grants from the Indigenous Knowledge Initiative.   Two of those grants will support dialogue and exchange between Native American knowledge makers and Indigenous knowledge makers from outside the US. A $100,000 grant to Soul of Nations Foundation will support Indigenous artists and designers as they seek to create, reclaim, or reframe Indigenous spaces through ritual, performance, sculpture and architecture. Four lead artists (including one Navajo and one Choctaw artist) and up to thirty artist fellows from the US, Kenya, and Bolivia will receive financial support to develop their projects and will participate in a cohort experience. The lead artists will participate in a five-day residency in New York City, where their work will also be shown. The artist fellows will form a hybrid cohort but will remain based in their home countries. Soul of Nations, founded in 2016 and headquartered in New York, supports Black and Indigenous communities through art and research.    Cultural Survival, a venerable organization founded in half a century ago to advocate on behalf of Indigenous cultures and communities globally, seeks $75,000 to support a language program exchange and conference. A small group of language preservation and perseverance leaders from communities in the US, Latin America, and Eurasia will come together in Oaxaca, Mexico this spring to share best practices, strengthen networks, and visit and learn from local language programs. Then, the smaller group will join a larger group of 30 language workers in Oklahoma to share what they have learned their learnings and expand the network further. The convening will be live-streamed so that a range of students, activists, funders, and policymakers can benefit from it. Finally, CS will provide small fellowships to youth language activists seeking to carry out projects in their own communities.   The third project will be supported with a grant to Diné College (DC), a tribal college serving the Navajo reservation. DC will use $25,000 to explore the re-launch of the Diné College Press. The funds will be used to complete and publish a volume featuring DC faculty work and also pieces by Diné Medicine People. The volume aims to connect traditional wisdom to contemporary life. At the same time, it will serve as a pilot project for the Press, which, if re-established, would be the first and only among the tribal colleges—and an assertion of educational and cultural sovereignty.   Finally, the Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust seeks support for its on-going efforts to re-matriate land on behalf of and to the Wiyot nation, a federally-recognized tribe. This is an unusual grant for the Indigenous Knowledge Initiative since it does not directly support knowledge makers. However, (re) acquiring historically- and culturally-significant land is central to the project of recovering and preserving Indigenous knowledge. Native languages, belief systems, artistic and ceremonial practices are tied, inextricably, to the lands from which they emerged. For Indigenous knowledges to thrive, they must live again in specific places. A Luce grant of $100,000 would not be applied to land acquisitions but to underwrite the administrative work that is required to secure the transfer of land back to the Wiyot nation. The land in question would be used for a tribal cemetery, a retreat center, and conserved natural space.   Thank you for your consideration of these grants.