Headwaters Foundation Announces 2010 Fund of the Sacred Circle Grant Awards

The Headwaters Foundation for Justice is pleased to announce $40,000 in grant awards to four Wisconsin- and Minnesota-based nonprofits through the Fund of the Sacred Circle.

The Fund of the Sacred Circle supports the work of Native urban, rural and tribal groups to address systemic issues affecting American Indian communities. Focus areas include language and cultural revitalization, land and environmental restoration, sovereignty and treaty rights, and self-determination and civil rights. Established in 1999, the Fund of the Sacred Circle is operated in conjunction with the Wisconsin Community Fund and directed by Native community leaders who make funding decisions. Since the Fund began making grants in 2001, it has awarded 49 grants totaling $440,000.

“The Fund of the Sacred Circle is a key component of our community-led grantmaking,” said Headwaters Executive Director Trista Harris. “As a permanent resource for the community, The Fund of the Sacred Circle will do its part to ensure that the sovereignty and self-determination of Native people is secure.”

$10,000 grants were awarded to each of the following organizations:

• Dakota Wicohan, an organization working to preserve and revitalize the Dakota language and life ways. While rooted within the Dakota community, Dakota Wicohan works across tribal and political boundaries, working to address the crisis of a mere nine affluent speakers remaining in the state of Minnesota. Their vision and philosophy is that language is linked to the regeneration of Dakota identity, health and community.
• Indigenous Environmental Network, a national environmental and economic justice network working to strengthen grassroots efforts to bring about fundamental change. Their Ojibwe Seventh Generation Guardianship project combines native language revitalization with environmental conservation by engaging communities to understand their relationship to and role in protecting local ecosystems that grow wild food and medicinal plants.
• Indigenous People’s Green Jobs Coalition, an organization formed to ensure that indigenous people have a voice in the new green economy. The organization will launch and sustain an effective state-wide movement that will result in the development of training programs, legislation, funding and awareness of the need to create healthy and sustainable communities for Indigenous people in the emerging green economy.
• Waadookodaading Language Immersion Charter School, an Ojibwe language immersion school for students in kindergarten through the fifth grade. The school is seeing dozens of children achieve language proficiency--levels that have not existed for two generations. The organization’s long-term goal is to continue to revitalize and preserve the Ojibwe/Anishinaabe as an active language.