Historic Recordings Revitalize Language For Passamaquoddy Tribal Members

Cut Bank, Montana has incorporated education about Native Americans in all grade levels with a special emphasis on and participation by Blackfeet Nation students because of the reservation's proximity. This effort is also state legislature: the Indian Education For All (IEFA) law was passed in 1999 and funds schools conducting the curriculum. Cut Bank School is special because of how Blackfeet Nation students contribute to the teaching, but students are also learning by reading stories about American Indians, learning words and phrases, talking about the first Thanksgiving, and playing traditional music.

In October of 2019, the city of Eureka, California returned stolen lands to the Wiyot Tribe, the region’s Native American people. This was done over a decade after a brutal massacre on the land, which is an island that had slowly become overgrown and deemed uninhabitable. The Wiyots worked every weekend for years cleaning up the land, and now, with a clean bill of health and the property rights, they can start to heal as a community together again.

A Nepalese company called Traditional Homes was formed in order to restore traditional Newari homes to prevent them from being demolished. The houses are by the indigenous Newar people of the Kathmandu Valley and boast beautiful latticed windows and courtyards. These small restoration projects have taken off thanks to websites like TripAdvisor and Booking.com. Not only does the money go directly to the locals supporting the new bed-and-breakfasts, but tourists also receive an authentic and homey experience.

Organizations like Ho’oulu ka ‘Ulu are reintroducing small-scale farmers to breadfruit — a traditional Hawaiian starchy fruit that fell out of style following the rise of plantation farming and colonialism. Growers are taught how to cultivate and sell the fruit, and their network of now 200 farmers are helping to keep part of their culture alive. Similarly, in California a Food Roots program connects farmers growing traditional Asian produce like bok choy to local businesses and markets to provide accessibility to culturally relevant fresh produce.

Patrick Ball, cofounder of the nonprofit Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), has helped use quantitative data to put numbers behind things that were before unprovable — i.e. the difference between genocide and random violence. Ball and HRDAG have analyzed existing data to come up with the "invisible" data, overlaying several sets of statistics with machine learning to come up with stats like the fact that you were eight times more likely to be killed by the army in the Ixil region in the early 1980s if you were indigenous. Ball also advises nine truth commissions, four UN commissions, and more.

A graduate student from British Columbia, the Arctic Energy Alliance, and the elders of the Inuvialuit people may seem a strange team, but together they are tackling the dual concerns of climate change and the loss of indigenous language in Canada. By inventing new terms and words in the Inuvialuit language to describe renewable energy technologies, they are increasing awareness about sustainable development while helping preserve the culture and heritage of this unique population.

Kha'p'o Community School recently became the first of six Native American Community Academy schools in New Mexico and, after two years of planning, is now entirely under tribal control. Its educational model brings tribal language and project-based learning focused on tribal identity into the classroom. This model teaches the importance of cultural preservation and prepares the children who will someday be leading the very tribe that they are being educated in.

In the face of terror and war, art and history needed protection. A group of professors, activists, archeologists, and historians created a network to preserve and protect art and history in Syria.

The coordinated response involved decades of persistent advocacy, strategic coalition-building among Indigenous nations, environmentalists, and government officials, sustained direct activism, and innovative legal and corporate negotiations, ultimately leading to the historic removal of four dams along the Klamath River. This effort successfully restored salmon habitat and ecosystem health, setting a groundbreaking precedent for addressing environmental justice, tribal sovereignty, and dam removal conflicts nationwide.

Native tribes and First Nations in the Great Lakes Region are successfully reviving wild rice, a native crop that is deemed “extremely vulnerable” to climate change and lost much of its wetland habitat. The tribes’ restoration projects involve seeding lakebeds, monitoring water levels and quality, educating others on the importance of the crop, and harvesting it by hand.