California Indian Museum & Cultural Center

This project will enable California Indian Museum & Cultural Center to increase their capacity to continue their Native youth entrepreneurship programming.

This project will leverage CIMCC’s current efforts to purchase and/or obtain donated oak woodlands to be utilized and controlled by Native community members for traditional food way activities by training CIMCC staff and Native youth to form and develop a new non-profit land trust.

The project will deliver messaging and mental health supports to vulnerable community members by trusted Tribal Culture Bearers to increase their knowledge of how to protect themselves from COVID-19 infection. It leverages technology and our existing cultural arts program to reach people living remotely and retain community connections safely.

This project creates a resilience hub at CIMCC. It leverages our facility, staff and curriculum to provide power, connectivity, cleaner air and programs to Native people to increase their safety and wellness during disasters; knowledge of clean energy alternatives, use of traditional foods, and control over Native food systems.

COVID-19 Response Survey

The project leverages Elder and Native youth knowledge and skills to create cold water leaching stations, an educational video and workshop. The resources will retain community knowledge about cold water leaching of acorns and be utilized by acorn producers to facilitate and increase their production of acorn meal.

The project leverages youth-lead research and educational resources to create policy options to facilitate increased tribal community access to and control of traditional food places. The tribal communities will retain the traditional food ways by utilizing them and members will have better health outcomes through gathering and consuming traditional foods.

In the project Native youth leverage a model curriculum and Native adult and elder knowledge to create 7 new oral history videos on essential understandings about California Indians. The videos will be utilized to increase Native youth's and K-12 students' knowledge of tribes' sovereignty, diversity, identity and contributions to civilization.

This project will increase local control over data on the local food system. This project will increase data driven knowledge and create community plans based on data collected from a community food sovereignty assessment.

The ultimate purpose is to (1) create a new and affordable food product from a spiritually, traditionally and nutritionally important resource that can support California Indian people and others in addressing Type II diabetes; (2) retain knowledge about the importance of acorns in California Indian diets and acorn gathering and processing skills in the community by creating demand for and instilling knowledge in Native youth; and (3) leverage the project results to advance the youths' work to develop a mission-driven, micro-enterprise that serves the health and nutritional needs of California Indians and educates others about California Indians.

The ultimate purpose is to (1) create a youth led micro-enterprise in which youth develop products that educate others about their tribal communities while increasing the number of locally made Native art resources offered in a new social enterprise gift shop, and (2) increase the set of skills these same youth bring to a specialty retail employment training program in which they will serve as peer mentors for other youth. In addition, the project will give the youth a more nuanced understanding of Native business development thereby (3) increasing their control over the larger program they are helping to create.