United States: Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples’ Grant Program

Deadline: 16-Oct-23

The Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc. is currently accepting proposals for its grant program to support Native grassroot initiatives focusing on healthy environments, social justice and community well-being.

The primary purpose of their work is dedicated to Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination and the sovereignty of Native nations.

Program Areas

• The Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples invites Native-led and community-generated organizations to apply for support from one of its four grant programs:
  • Community Vitality
    • Community Vitality supports projects that are rooted in relationship to land, healing, cultural revitalization and knowledge sharing, and the weaving of intergenerational kinships, honoring elder and youth relationships, and nurturing cultural transmission strategies. The following pathways amplify projects culturally grounded practices and social justice:
      • Traditional Foodways bring vitality, food sovereignty, food security, and support for subsistence food strategies to their communities.
      • Community-Based Healing rooted in traditional health and healing, community wellness and ceremonial practices.
      • Language Revitalization and Creative Expression strengthens cultural identity and intergenerational learning; tribal language revitalization, communications, and fluency, creativity, and arts development, and builds community cohesion.
      • Traditional Wisdom and Cultural Knowledge Sharing practices which restore Indigenous identities, knowledge systems and practices, cultural mapping and curriculum development, and culturally rooted leadership development.
  • Flicker Fund
    • Responds to already vulnerable and stressed Indigenous communities on the frontlines of climate caused crisis and emergencies ranging from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and its rippling negative effects, to fires, floods, drought, and climate disasters.
    • The Flicker Fund implements its work through the following pathways to assure Indigenous families, clans, communities, and Nations not only survive, but can thrive:
      • Basic and Urgent Health focusing on essential needs for wellness, sanitation and hygiene, of the most vulnerable with a focus on elders, multi-generational households and families with children under the age of five years old.
      • Historic and Cultural Teachings including – as appropriate – the sharing of prophecies, stories, and lifeways that advance traditional knowledge systems informing community members on health, healing, survival and thriving strategies, and moving forward with vitality.
      • Traditional Healing Practices and Remedies supporting growing and cultivation of medicinal food systems, and culturally-relevant strategies for immune support.
  • Land, Water, and Climate
    • Recognizes and supports Indigenous Peoples’ traditional relationships and responsibilities to land, water, community, and spirit.
    • The Land, Water, and Climate Program implements its work through the following pathways for ecological justice to assure the sacred birthright of future generations:
      • Climate Action for Future Generations
      • Land Back – Water Back
      • Renewable Energies
      • Sacred Places and Sacred Relationships
  • Thriving Women
    • Recognizes Indigenous women and girls’ inherent strength and capacity for healing, leadership, and regenerating positive futures.
    • Thriving Women centers and uplifts Indigenous women’s leadership and strategies to reclaim traditional matrilineal lifeways that have sustained and built nations since time immemorial. It recognizes the targeting of Indigenous women and girls as a manifestation of ongoing colonization and the link between extractive industries and violence against Mother Earth as it is mirrored in the lives and bodies of Native Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit Relatives.
    • Thriving Women is implemented through the following pathways for gender and social justice:
      • Birth-keeping, Motherhood, and Kinship
      • Honoring the Rights of Mother Earth
      • Reclaiming a World Without Violence Against Women, Girls, and Two-Spirits
      • Women and Girls’ Cultural Vitality and Leadership

Funding Information

• Grant Award Range: $500 to $50,000
• (average grant award: $10,000 – $25,000)

Eligibility Criteria

• All applications must be submitted by Indigenous Peoples. Eligible applicants:
  • Emerge from, are led by, and grounded in, the Indigenous Peoples served and who are most impacted by the project.
  • Nurture and center the culture, language, traditional knowledge systems, and healthy lifeways of the Indigenous Peoples involved in the project.
  • Have 80% or more Indigenous Peoples leadership at the Board of Directors or other decision-making entity, and have an Indigenous Executive Director or Project leaders, and Indigenous Peoples engaged throughout all aspects of the organization. (Thriving Women mandates 80% or more Indigenous women-identified Board of Directors, and an Indigenous woman Executive Director or Project leaders.)
  • Are a non-profit with 501(c)3 tax exempt status, a federally-recognized tribal nation project, have a fiscal sponsor or are a SGF Affiliate Project. If fiscally sponsored, the Seventh Generation Fund prioritizes applicants with Native or People of Color fiscal sponsoring organizations.
  • Prioritizing community-based projects with budgets of <$500,000.
  • Are in good standing with the Seventh Generation Fund without reports due or outstanding issues.
• Special Initiatives: SGF is looking to support projects by and for Two Spirit community members and also projects focused on land, culture, and language in the North American Southwest.
• They do not support: non-Native organizations or religious missionizing efforts.

For more information, visit SGF.