Grants in 2022

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Keepers of the Water Council

$8,000 to support efforts to strengthen Indigenous community-based monitoring strategies through direct outreach to Indigenous communities impacted by coal and tar sands across Alberta, Canada, as well as through several smaller community meetings and a larger gathering for 50 Indigenous participants. Keepers of the Water gatherings are vital to ensure that Indigenous communities are supported in addressing the impacts of fossil fuel extraction and to help strengthen community-based monitoring strategies that support environmental review submissions and legal proceedings in the pursuit of environmental justice.

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Fossil Free Media

$7,500 to support a frontline delegation from the Appalachia region to Washington, D.C. for a People vs. Fossil Fuels rally outside the Capitol to demand that U.S. Senators and Representatives stop Senator Manchin’s proposed dirty infrastructure bill that would fast-track fossil fuel projects, including the fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline, and undercut basic environmental protections. The Mountain Valley Pipeline alone would lead to annual emissions equivalent to 26 coal plants and threaten the land, air, and water of communities along its entire 300-mile route, which would cross over nearly 1,000 streams and wetlands.
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Earth Guardians

$10,000 to support Earth Guardians’ Indigenous Youth Initiative, which is led by Indigenous youth on the frontlines of climate and social justice movements, including the fossil fuel fights, across the U.S. and Canada. Funds supported travel and participation costs for the weeklong Indigenous Youth Leadership Training.

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West Virginia Rising

$5,000 to support a mass mobilization and communications effort to spotlight Senator Manchin’s role in profiting off of dirty fossil fuels while blocking clean energy and just transition efforts in Congress that are critically needed. The mobilization took place at a coal plant that burns 500,000 tons of coal waste per year with Senator Manchin’s family business supplying the coal waste, which has been highlighted prominently by the New York Times and other publications.

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Defund Climate Chaos Street Art Project

$10,000 to support the Street Art Project to Defund Climate Chaos, a joint initiative of Indigenous, climate justice and low-wage workers movements, along with prominent art collectives (including BIPOC artists), organizing #DefundClimateChaos art actions in support of climate justice campaigns and movement building, building skills for ongoing actions, and helping to tell the stories of defunding and divesting from fossil fuels and creating positive alternatives.

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The FANG Collective

$5,000 to support a campaign and community organizing to shut down an existing fossil fuel power plant in the rural working-class town of Burrillville, Rhode Island through a Just Transition framework. The project is also seeking the return of 365 acres of land held by the plant owner in and around Burrillville to the Nipmuc Tribe.

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Fundación Hakhu Amazonía

$5,000 to support Indigenous-led campaign, communications and legal efforts seeking the cancellation of mining concessions in the Napo region of the Ecuadorian Amazon where thousands of individuals are engaged in illegal mining. Legal efforts resulted in the temporary suspensions of mining rights and a commitment from the government to address environmental damages caused to date by illegal mining, but Fundación Hakhu Amazonía is pushing for more long-term actions to protect the rights and security of impacted Indigenous communities.

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Federación de la Nacionalidad Achuar del Perú (FENAP)

$5,000 to support the Achuar Indigenous community-led efforts clearing and expanding a network of strategic footpaths used to patrol and monitor critical areas of their 2 million acres of roadless territory in the Peruvian Amazon in and around the Block 64 area where oil drilling that they are opposed to would happen, as well as working in coordination with the neighboring Wampis Indigenous Guard for joint control of the borders of their territories.

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Comunidad Kofán de Sinangoe

$5,000 to support 2 assemblies of Indigenous nations in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This first to host members of the Kofán, Kichwa, Waorani, Siekopai, Shuar, and Siona nations to share experiences and lessons in their fights against resource extraction on their territories and the second for the community of Sinangoe to plan community priorities and strategies related to a recent landmark legal victory of theirs recognizing, for the first time, the right of Indigenous communities in Ecuador to have the final decision over oil, mining and other extractive projects that affect their lands.

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Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB)

$10,000 to support 2 major Indigenous mobilizations in April and June to Brasilia with several thousand participants coming from the Amazon and all parts of Brazil to counter efforts by the Bolsonaro government to legalize mining and other industrial activities on Indigenous lands (via Bill 191/2020), as well as spotlighting a Supreme Court case that could also undermine Indigenous land rights.