Briana Edmo
Program Officer, Stewarding Native Lands
Navajo, Blackfeet, Shoshone-Bannock
Through the Woven Lands Initiative, First Nations explores and implements new models, investments, and tools to secure and expand Native stewardship of tribal homelands.
For too long, Tribes and Native communities have been forced to conform to western conservation practices and tools to secure financial resources. Western conservation frameworks have not been designed – from a legal or cultural perspective – to include Tribes, and, as a result, directly exclude them.
New funding models and tools must bring together existing conservation statutes, public-lands law and, most importantly, federal Indian law, with deeply held tribal values and practices.
In direct partnership with Tribes and Native communities, the Woven Lands Initiative creates and strengthens Native-centered approaches, which honor and respect tribal values, cultural traditions, traditional knowledge, and Tribal Sovereignty.
Key to scaling Native stewardship is increasing tribal access to tribal homelands. Land is essential to the expression of our kinship, stewardship responsibilities, and cultural traditions. Native communities manage land and cultural resources in reciprocity, and maintaining this balance is essential to the health and wellbeing of our lands and communities. Rematriating lands lost because of colonization, federal policies, and other unjust takings is a necessary step toward healing, reparations, and justice, and significantly benefits global climate and biodiversity.
Support under this initiative is made possible thanks to generous contributions from the Doris Duke Foundation, Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Tribal Lands Conservation Fund, U.S. Forest Service, and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service).
