American Lands Alliance

America’s wildlife and wildlands continue to be threatened by logging, roadbuilding, grazing, off road vehicles and mining. A broad coalition of activists and organizations is dedicated to protecting our forest heritage and restoring ecological integrity to the landscape.

American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation

We are a non-federally funded intercultural partnership committed to assisting in the return of sacred ceremonial material to the appropriate American Indian Nation, clan, or family, and to educating the public about the importance of repatriation.

Arctic Refuge Action Coalition

Arctic Refuge Action is a coalition of conservation, labor, religious and other citizen groups representing millions of Americans who believe the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should remain wild, unspoiled, and free of oil rigs. This summer, our broad, diverse and unprecedented coalition of non-profit organizations, grassroots organizers and average citizens will unite under one strong, simple message: Congress must not allow drilling in the Arctic Refuge. There's still time to save our Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and with your help, Arctic Refuge Action can do it!

The Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA)

AAIA promotes the welfare and cultural survival of American Indians, Aleuts and Eskimos in the U.S. by protecting the Constitutional rights of these groups, and focusing on health issues, economic development and education. AAIA has worked on sacred site protection since the 1920s and is currently involved in struggles at Devils Tower and the Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, and Bear Butte in South Dakota.

Bay Area Nuclear Waste Coalition

BAN Waste was formed in 1991 to stop the proposal for a nuclear waste dump in the eastern Mojave desert at Ward Valley. In concert with a coalition of environmental, social justice organizations, Indian tribes and indigenous rights activists, they successfully halted the proposed project after 12 years of dedicated effort. Their Web site contains archival material on the Ward Valley campaign and a description of their current activities.

Buffalo Nations

Buffalo Nations, an affiliate of the Seventh Generation Fund, is directly affecting a change in current management practices of the sacred Yellowstone buffalo herd.

Call of the Earth

Call of the Earth (Llamado de la Tierra) is an independent indigenous-controlled initiative that supports and enables indigenous peoples to reframe the discussions and negotiations on intellectual property rights and traditional knowledge through our own perspectives and from within our own cultures. The preservation of indigenous peoples — languages, territories and cultures is an inter-generational responsibility inherited from the ancestors with an obligation to pass on to future generations.

The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice

The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice serves as a resource center for community groups working on environmental justice issues. We provide information and publications; direct assistance to groups; outreach, referral and network development; and training and leadership development.

Circle of Life Foundation

Founded by Julia Butterfly Hill, the Circle of Life Foundation envisions a sustainable culture that honors biological and cultural diversity. Through education and outreach, we promote efforts to protect and restore the Earth. We inspire, support and network individuals, organizations and communities so together we can create environmental and social solutions that are rooted deeply in love and respect for the interconnectedness of all life.

Cultural Conservancy

The Cultural Conservancy is an indigenous rights non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of indigenous cultures and their ancestral lands. CC has a fifteen year history of working with indigenous communities locally in California, nationally throughout North America, and internationally, on environmental research and land protection, sacred site preservation, cultural revitalization, public education, and community empowerment. Their mission statement is: “to preserve the traditional cultures of native peoples, empowering them in the direct application of their traditional beliefs and practices on their ancestral lands.”

Cultural Survival

Cultural Survival is a non-profit organization founded in 1972 to defend the human rights and cultural autonomy of indigenous peoples and oppressed ethnic minorities. Through research and publications we focus attention on violations of those rights and advocate alternative policies that avoid genocide, ethnic conflict and the destruction of other peoples’ ways of life. Cultural Survival develops educational materials that promote tolerance and understanding of other cultures, and respect for indigenous peoples - the world’s original stewards of the environment.

Earthjustice

Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations and communities.

First Nations Development Institute

First Nations Development Institute is a Native American nonprofit of 20 years’ standing. “Our primary mission is to promote culturally appropriate economic development by and for Native peoples; to this end we serve as an educator, advocate, researcher, funder, fund raiser, and purveyor of information, resources and ideas. We are preparing a better future for Native Americans, and your understanding is part of our provision for getting from here to there.”

First Peoples Worldwide

First Peoples Worldwide (FPW) is the international arm of First Nations Development Institute and has the same mission: to assist indigenous peoples to control and develop their assets and, through that control, build the capacity to direct their economic futures in ways that fit their cultures.

Forest Peoples Programme

Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) advocates an alternative vision of how forests should be managed and controlled, based on respect for the rights of the peoples who know them best. We work with forest peoples in South America, Central Africa, South and South East Asia, and Central Siberia to help these communities secure their rights, build up their own organisations and negotiate with governments and companies as to how economic development and conservation is best achieved on their lands. Founded in 1990, FPP has grown into a respected and successful organisation that bridges the gap between policy makers and forest peoples.

Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE)

GRACE works to form new links with the research, policy and grassroots communities to preserve the future of the planet and protect the quality of the environment. Two main campaigns seek to eliminate factory farming and nuclear weapons, another is developing a coalition called Water for All to resist the privatization of water.

Grand Canyon Trust

Grand Canyon Trust is dedicated to the conservation of the natural and cultural resources of the Colorado Plateau. We advocate an ecologically responsible and sustainable balance between resource use and preservation, along with the protection of areas of beauty and solitude, where people may find relief from the pace of civilization. The Trust fosters and assists efforts of individuals, groups, communities and governments -- local, tribal, state, and federal -- to achieve this balance. To these ends the Trust employs science, economics, resource management, education, communication, and law. Our vision is of a region where generations of people and all of nature can thrive in productive harmony.

Great Plains Restoration Council

The Great Plains Restoration Council is dedicated to building the Buffalo Commons step-by-step by bringing the wild buffalo back and restoring healthy, sustainable communities to the Great Plains.  GPRC’s  Million Acre Project is a national community effort to restore and protect a million connected acres as a prairie Safe Zone, and is the first step in establishing the coming Buffalo Commons.

Honor the Earth

The Honor the Earth Campaign creates awareness and support for Indigenous environmental issues and leverages needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Indigenous communities. The campaign will develop these resources by utilizing music, the arts, media, and Indigenous wisdom to ask people to recognize our joint dependency on the Earth.

Indian Burial and Sacred Grounds Watch

The IBSGWATCH web site is intended to enhance access to and dissemination of information on causes concerned with Indian burial and sacred grounds. It provides lists of endangered sites with suggested actions to take. It also gives information on laws and legal issues concerning American Indian burial grounds, mounds and sacred sites, as well as information on burial mound history and preserved sites.

Indian Law Resource Center

The Indian Law Resource Center is devoted to helping Indian nations, tribes and other indigenous peoples prevent destruction of their cultures and homelands, and thereby achieve equal status as members of the human family. Many irreplaceable native cultures have already disappeared and many others struggle on the verge of extinction. The Indian Law Resource Center seeks to overcome the devastating threats to indigenous peoples by establishing national and international legal standards that uphold their human rights and dignity, protect Indian land and resources, and secure their authority for genuine self-government and sustainable futures.

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility

ICCR is a twenty-nine-year-old international coalition of 275 Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish institutional investors. As responsible stewards, they merge social values with investment decisions, believing they must achieve more than an acceptable financial return. ICCR members utilize religious investments and other resources to change unjust or harmful corporate policies, working for peace, economic justice and stewardship of the Earth. One of the ICCR’s current campaigns is against the use of racially offensive logos, including Native American sports mascots.

International Forum on Globalization

The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) is an alliance of 60 leading activists, scholars, economists, researchers and writers formed to stimulate new thinking, joint activity and public education in response to economic globalization. Representing over 60 organizations in 25 countries, IFG associates share concern that the world’s corporate and political leadership is undertaking a restructuring of global politics and economics that may prove as historically significant as any event since the Industrial Revolution. This restructuring is happening at tremendous speed, with little public disclosure of the profound consequences affecting democracy, human welfare, local economies and the natural world.

International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs

IWGIA supports indigenous peoples' struggle for human rights, self-determination, right to territory, control of land and resources, cultural integrity, and the right to development. IWGIA is based in Copenhagen, and consists of membership groups around Europe.

The Inter-Tribal Coalition to Defend Bear Butte

The Inter-Tribal Coalition to Defend Bear Butte is a group made up of tribes and their traditional societies to protect and defend their right to pray and have their ceremonies in peace. The current threat to traditional tribal cultural practices is a 22,000-square-foot drive through biker bar, campground and 30,000-seat amphitheater complex under construction less than two miles from Bear Butte.

Indigenous Environmental Network

The Indigenous Environmental Network is an alliance of grassroots indigenous peoples whose mission is to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth from contamination and exploitation by strengthening maintaining and respecting the traditional teachings and the natural laws.

Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB)

The IPCB is organized to assist indigenous peoples in the protection of their genetic resources, indigenous knowledge, cultural and human rights from the negative effects of biotechnology. The IPCB provides educational and technical support to indigenous peoples in the protection of their biological resources, cultural integrity, knowledge and collective rights.

Line in the Sand: Native American Cultural Property

This site is offered as a place where the debate over where to draw the “Line in the Sand” on the issues of cultural property, Native American sovereignty, Native American identity, ethnic stereotypes, the commodification of Native American culture, and all related issues, can take place.

Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center

The Mount Shasta Bio-regional Ecology Center (MSBEC) is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to preserving and protecting the environment of Mount Shasta and surrounding areas. We believe that society can exist in harmony with nature; indeed, such is essential to our survival. Current projects include Save Mount Shasta, Save Medicine Lake, and the H.O.M.E. (Honor Our Mountain Environment) Stewardship Project.

National Congress of American Indians

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) was founded in 1944 and is the oldest and largest national Indian organization. NCAI serves a diverse network of nations with a combined citizenry of comprising three quarters of the American Indian and Alaska Native national population. The NCAI is organized as a representative congress of consensus on national priority issues. Our mission is to advocate on behalf of the unified interests of tribal governments and to promote a better understanding among the public about Indian and Native governments, people, and, rights. This Web Site is a part of NCAI’s outreach efforts to both the native people and the general public.

Native American Rights Fund

The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is a non-profit legal organization devoted to defending and promoting the legal rights of Indian people. Founded in 1970, NARF’s staff of 40 includes 15 attorneys whose mission is to protect the sovereignty of tribal nations, protect tribal natural resources and human rights, demand government accountability, and educate the public about Indian issues.

Project Underground

Project Underground exists as a vehicle for the environmental, human rights and indigenous rights movements to carry out focused campaigns against abusive extractive resource activity. They seek to systematically deal with the problems created by the mining and oil industries by exposing environmental and human rights abuses by corporations and by building capacity amongst communities facing mineral and energy development to achieve economic and environmental justice. You can find their excellent electronic newsletter “Drillbits and Tailings” on their website.

Puvungna Sacred Site Struggle

A coalition of organic gardeners, community activists, Native Americans, and activists from the Peter Carr Peace Center has emerged to oppose the Cal State Long Beach administration’s plans to first, pave the organic gardens for a temporary parking lot and then, develop the entire area as the West Village Center, a commercial development to include retail shops, restaurants, an inn and conference center, apartments, and townhomes.

Sacred Sites International

Sacred Sites International Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of sacred sites and their traditional cultures. We support grassroots preservation efforts with publicity in the Sacred Sites newsletter and the media; legal referrals; Letter-Writing Campaigns; and Fund-Raising for site and cultural preservation through our Study Tour program.

SAGE Council

Formerly the Petroglyph Monument Protection Coalition, the SAGE Council is fighting to stop a 6-lane highway from being constructed through an area west of Albuquerque that is rich in petroglyphs and has been used for prayer and ceremony for many generations. The area was designated Petroglyph National Monument in 1990.

Save Our Environment Action Center

A collaborative effort of the nation’s most influential environmental advocacy organizations harnessing the power of the internet to increase public awareness and activism on today’s most important issues. By clicking on the campaigns listed on the site, you can make your voice heard in the crucial battles to protect our air and water; our lands, forests, and oceans; our wildlife; our children’s future; and our planet’s climate.

Save Ward Valley

Colorado river native nations alliance vows to prevent further destruction of sacred land in Ward Valley.

Seventh Generation Fund

An outspoken advocate for Native autonomy and self-reliance, the Seventh Generation Fund seeks to reaffirm the ability of Native peoples to have confidence in our own abilities to revitalize our communities and acquire those skills necessary to fulfill those ideals. This is accomplished through facilitating the self-help efforts of Native peoples to rebuild our communities and assure our self-determinative futures through an integrated program of small grants, technical assistance, leadership training, and administrative support.

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is the voice of one of America’s most threatened landscapes -- the wild and unspoiled Colorado Plateau. Twenty-five thousand concerned citizens from across the nation have joined SUWA’s hard-hitting, grassroots commitment to save the magnificent canyon country of Southern Utah.

Trust for Public Land

Trust for Public Land’s motto is “conserving land for people.” TPL’s Tribal Lands Program works to meet the land conservation and cultural preservation needs of American Indians by returning traditional native lands to tribal ownership. The TPL website features regional and state home pages and hundreds of local conservation success stories, along with information from TPL specialists in urban conservation, conservation funding, watershed conservation, the economic benefits of parks and open space. A comprehensive newsroom offers access to a complete list of TPL media contacts. Don’t miss Lands You Love, where website users tell other website users about their special landscapes. Land & People, TPL’s magazine of conservation, is also posted on the website. For information about the Tribal Lands Program contact Doug Nash at (208) 962-3088.

Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization

UNPO offers an international forum for occupied nations, indigenous peoples, minorities, and even oppressed majorities who currently struggle to regain their lost countries, preserve their cultural identities, protect their basic human and economic rights and safeguard the natural environment.

Western Shoshone Defense Project

The Western Shoshone Defense Project’s mission is to affirm Newe (Western Shoshone) jurisdiction over Newe Sogobia (Western Shoshone homelands) by protecting, preserving, and restoring Newe rights and lands for present and future generations based on cultural and spiritual traditions.

Winnemem Wintu Tribe

The Winnemem Wintu Tribe is “dedicated to the continuation and preservation of Wintu cultural and religious sites, the language and ceremonies of the Winnemem people.” The Winnemem were featured in our feature-length documentary on Native American struggles to protect sacred places, In the Light of Reverence, and they continue their fight for federal recognition.