Awarded Grants

Bezos Professional Development

Bezos Professional Development

Nkwusm Salish Language School is a non-profit organization, serving the Salish and Pend d’Oreille communities on the Flathead Reservation in northwestern Montana. Nkwusm has successfully operated a Salish language immersion school for twenty years, providing instruction to more than 140 children, ages 2-14, and ultimately recreating the process whereby the Salish language is passed from parent to child since its founding in 2002.

We would like to use these funds for our operational needs, including Child Care Assistant position for our new Child Care, classroom supplies, and training opportunities. Our new program has just received certification through the Colville Confederated Tribes to provide child care services for children ages 0-12 years old. Our child care program will provide our Hearts Gathered students wrap-around child care and child care opportunities for our community which is on the Colville Indian Reservation.

Hopitutuqaiki will provide a year-round Hopi language immersion experience for 3-4 year-olds and a Hopi language and culture experience for older students and adults involving traditional and non-traditional art projects and panel discussions of cultural aspects of cultural life. Students from 3 years old through elders will be served on the Hopi Reservation in Northeast Arizona. Some activities may be videoed or streamed to enable Hopi living in other areas to attend.

Kaststenserion "Giving Strength" our project is to strengthen both the Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom School, Inc and the Akwesasne Freedom School. The project will serve all staff, teachers, trainees and families of the Akwesasne Freedom School.

In 2020, with help from Melvin Consulting, ZYEP established a four year strategic action plan that set specific goals that would strengthen the organization in our mission and our sustainability. Setting these intentions helped ZYEP think beyond the current operating year and make long term plans for a deeper impact. These goals are not always program or activity specific, but more capacity building and operational focused. This general operating grant will allow ZYEP to invest in our strategic action plan.

Our Lakota Language & Education Initiative is a multifaceted and multigenerational effort that aims at reclaiming, restoring and revitalizing our Lakota language and lifeways. Our programming ranges from serving children as young as 18 months in our "language-nest" style Lakota Immersion Montessori classrooms, working alongside adults and young adults to learn, speak and empower through our language, preserving our language by recording our elders and providing youth activities in our language.

The 2022-23 sƛ̓x̌atkʷ n̓səl̓xčin̓ sn̓maʔmáyaʔtn̓ / Salish Immersion School Program will provide Salish immersion preschool, childcare and K-6 education for 33 Native youth from the Spokane Metro Area. The program will be based on traditional Salish culture, and will provide Salish immersion instruction in literacy, math, science, physical education, health, music and art. Participating students will spend approximately 20% of their school days on the land engaged in ceremonies, cultural practice, scientific fieldwork, and/or harvesting and gathering.