Awarded Grants

The ultimate purpose of the Summer Turtle program is to: 1) increase our children's cultural understanding and appreciation and, thus, give them a heightened ethnic confidence and pride about who they are and how they fit into the world. 2) increase language fluency among our youth in order to ensure the long term sustainability and viability of our previously dormant language. 3) create and nurture values in our youth that yield physically and emotionally healthy children who will one day become adults who can lead in and serve their communities and families.

The ultimate purpose is to 1) create a bridge for our youth, especially those without other means of connection, to participate in a full cultural life on their homeland, increasing their sense of belonging and the access to healthy adults and elders; and 2) utilize creative and artistic means of expression to help youth develop confidence in their creativity, communication and leadership skills. In addition, this project will help us leverage other funding to help this all volunteer project develop to include a wider age range of youth involvement and to create capacity and sustainability for their youth club.

The ultimate purpose is to 1) increase the access of our Navajo community families and elders to healthy,locally grown and traditional foods, 2) to increase the participation of our Navajo students in the growing, preparation, and serving of these foods to the community, and 3) to contribute to tribal economic development in our area by demonstrating to our local tribal farmers, families and students how to utilize the certified community kitchen on our school campus to generate value-added products made from locally-grown produce.

The ultimate purpose of the Zuni Youth Teen Mentors program is to increase the leadership skills and potential of teen mentors while building commitment to serving the Zuni community. Further, the program will increase cultural connectedness and spread traditional knowledge among teen counsellors and young campers alike. The program will leverage in-kind resources from many community partners, allowing the program to continue to grow and better serve our youth.

The ultimate purpose of this project is to (1) increase domestic production and consumption of locally grown food, and (2) create new market opportunities for local food producers to serve local food markets whether it is farmers markets or mobile markets. Moreover, this project will help leverage or build upon the existing economic viability of local food producers by providing training and technical assistance while retaining Navajo identity, tradition, and culture through promotion of farming and traditional food consumption.

The ultimate purpose of Tawokaga is to 1) increase the number of community members engaged in Tawaokaga, making beautiful things, our Dakota word for art; and 2) leverage the successes our intergenerational group of artists have had over the past two years to increase the visibility and sustainability of Dakota arts in Native and non-Native venues in Minnesota through relationship building with individuals, communities, and organizations. These capacity-building steps will advance our Tawokaga goal of reclaiming and sustaining the intrinsic value of Dakota arts in relationship to artists and communities in southwestern Minnesota.

The purpose of the White Corn Project is to create access to white corn products among Seneca Nation of Indians members and to increase awareness of the benefits of white corn among Seneca Nation members, leveraging the availability of white corn products to improve the health and well-being of Seneca Community members. To increase white corn usage at the Seneca Nation, cooking demonstrations featuring white corn will be held at the Salamanca and Seneca Nation Farmers Markets and training sessions will be conducted for the kitchen/ nutrition personnel of several Seneca Nation agencies.

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.