The Native American Recovery Fund Zone Grant is a partnership between New Mexico Foundation, local and regional funders and groups working together to support unique approaches by Native-led organizations to address recovery efforts in New Mexico’s Native American communities in the following areas:
- Family Economic Security
- Local Health Systems
- Local Food Systems
- Opportunity Youth
- Water Resilience
In the first year of grantmaking, the Native American Recovery Fund Zone Grant provided grants to 12 Native-led organizations. The general operating, unrestricted grants are intended to help groups build back better after the pandemic.
The funders granted $25,000 each to the following groups:
Family Economic Security
Native Women Lead
To build capacity for Capital Access, which provides loan support to Native women breadwinners and entrepreneurs. The program provides zero or low interest loans, along with support in such areas as financial basics, marketing, website creation and more. Native Women Lead’s goal is to center indigenous women, provide capital access, build a racial justice fund, and create long-term investments that promote economic self-determination.
McKinley Community Health Alliance
To provide housing support to Native communities in the Navajo Nation and Zuni Pueblo. The organization will provide emergency housing support and will also collaborate with community groups to establish a “Housing First” model. The group recognizes that having stable housing not only increases a person’s survival chances during a crisis, but also leads to better overall health outcomes and economic security.
Local Food Systems
YAKANAL
To make food sovereignty a reality by supporting active participation among members of the Laguna Pueblo through caretaking of ancestral agricultural lands, water ditches, pollinators and adobe hornos for traditional cooking. In addition, the group will create a strategic framework to engage community and guide activities
Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps
To support the Traditional Farms Corps program, which trains the next generation of farmers from the Pueblo of Acoma and the Hopi Nation as a way to help indigenous communities meet food insecurity needs. The program also offers job training, personal and professional development opportunities, and connections to future career pathways for participants.
Health Systems
Nihi K’é Baa’
To support the building of traditional hogans as community gathering spaces across the Navajo Nation. The group will also work with community members on soil remediation efforts to allow for more growing of traditional foods in an area that has been negatively affected by runoff from uranium mining. The homesteads will serve as learning centers and demonstration sites so community members can relearn traditional knowledge lost over the years.
Pueblo of Pojoaque
To support activities at the Family Learning Center, which includes engaging teens in preparing and delivering weekly food boxes for pueblo families. In addition, the center will host a bi-monthly cooking class taught by tribal elder volunteers instructing youth about basic cooking techniques using traditional recipes.
Opportunity Youth
Americans for Indian Opportunity
To establish the Albuquerque Indigenous Elders/Youth Council and Native urban resource center. The council and center will host community activities for youth and strives to grow social justice leaders.
Jicarilla Apache Nation
To support the tribe’s Department of Youth mural project in the community of Dulce. The project will focus on painting murals that express the traditional ways of life from past to present. The community hopes the project will build bridges in addition to supporting mental health healing for youth.
Pueblo Action Alliance
To support Pueblo Youth Centered spaces in both urban and pueblo communities as a way to invest in youth voices. The program will allow youth access to space off and on indigenous lands so they may build and complete projects for their own communities that are in alignment with pueblo core values.
Water Resilience
Pueblo of Santa Clara
To support the forestry department’s development of an integrated water resource management plan for the Santa Clara Creek/Canyon area. The plan will focus on finding solutions to protect the Santa Clara Creek watershed and restoration of the Santa Clara Canyon and will benefit tribal members, as well as those who live in the greater Rio Grande Basin area.
Pueblo of San Felipe
To support the Indian Ditch Rehabilitation project. The ditch is integral to the pueblo’s many cultural and traditional practices and will also support the farmers’ needs for efficient and sufficient water supply.
Trees, Water and People
To support watershed restoration in the headwaters of Capulin Canyon, a tributary of the Rio Grande, and led by the Pueblos of Cochiti, Jemez and Santo Domingo. The first phase of the project will focus on reforesting the upland burned areas, providing critical slope stabilization, wildlife habitat and groundwater recharge.
In addition to pooling resources, funders will collaborate with community leaders over a three-year period to identify community-based approaches to opportunities and challenges, and also to support leadership capacity within organizations. Through this partnership, community leaders will have the opportunity to build deeper relationships with funders and institutional leaders and to share their perspectives and local knowledge with policy makers.
In the first year of grantmaking, each of the selected eligible applicants will be awarded a $25,000 general operating grant, followed by two years of implementation funding, if needed.
To donate to one of the focus areas supported by the Native American Recovery Fund Zone grant, click below, then search for Native American Recovery Fund under the “Select a designation” drop-down menu. You will be able to select which focus area you wish to support, or you can select “General” to contribute to the Leadership Support & Development Fund.