The Christensen Fund

The Christensen Fund works to support Indigenous Peoples in advancing their inherent rights, dignity, and self-determination. The foundation believes in the power of biological and cultural diversity to sustain and enrich a world faced with great change and uncertainty.

Since 2003, the fund has focused on "bio-cultural" diversity—the adaptive interweave of people and place, culture and ecology. The fund's mission is to buttress the efforts of people and institutions who believe in a biodiverse world infused with artistic expression and work to secure ways of life and landscapes that are beautiful, bountiful, and resilient.

The fund pursues this mission through place-based work in regions chosen for their potential to withstand and recover from the global erosion of diversity. It backs the efforts of locally-recognized community custodians of heritage and their alliances with scholars, artists, advocates, and others. The fund works primarily through capacity and network building, knowledge generation, collaboration, and mission-related investments.

Program areas include collaborative work to advance the inherent rights, dignity, and self-determination of Indigenous communities, nations, and peoples, with recognition of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Activities include scientific and public policy research, publishing and disseminating research results, conference reports and advocacy materials, promoting networking, and spreading best practices across community, public policy, and philanthropic domains.