California Truth and Healing Fund Grant

The California Truth and Healing Fund, initiated by the Decolonizing Wealth Project, aims to promote healing and truth-telling for California Native American communities. This multi-year grantmaking initiative seeks to engage families, tribes, and organizations in addressing historical injustices through capacity-building, advocacy, and traditional healing programs. Fund allocation will be guided by a board of California Native Americans, ensuring that funding priorities reflect the diverse experiences and needs of the communities served.

To support this process, Liberated Capital, a fund of Decolonizing Wealth Project, is launching a new multi-year grantmaking initiative, the California Truth and Healing Fund, to support the engagement of California Native American families, communities, tribes and organizations in the healing opportunities presented in this process and advance the broader objectives of the Council, including to galvanize philanthropy to support the recommendations from the Council’s report. Funding decisions will be guided by an advisory board of CA Native Americans.
Funding Priorities
Funding priorities of the California Truth and Healing Fund are listed below in order of priority and will shift over time as the work progresses. Current funding priority will be given to activities that advance truth and healing efforts for California Native communities, utilizing the following strategies: capacity-building & technical assistance, advocacy and movement-building, and healing. More information on the strategies are below:
Capacity-Building & Technical Assistance: for Tribes and Native-led organizations interested in capacity-building efforts as they relate broadly to truth and healing efforts, such as:
Tribal history, research, and narrative work to document truth-telling towards healing and repair, such as digitizing tribal history, research, narratives, documentation of land loss, cultural items, or archival material, etc. This may include efforts to record first-hand accounts and first-person narratives that capture oral history, clarify and correct the historical record, address grievances, and/or promote truth-telling.
Capacity-building for Tribes, including resources for legal support, capacity-building for Land Back claims, retrieving historical documentation, engaging anthropological or scientific support to support claims, capacity building for how to create tribal land trusts, capacity building regarding tribal co-management, and/or other tribal planning needs. This does not include resources to purchase land.
Advocacy and Movement-Building: for Tribes and Native-led organizations to hold policymakers accountable to adequately fund and implement community recommendations, including:
Efforts to spread awareness and increase community engagement of CA Native Americans in opportunities for truth and healing, including logistical or capacity support to address barriers to attending and engaging in the Council meetings and hearings. The fund will prioritize statewide and regional organizations and coalitions that can provide awareness and create community engagement and logistical or capacity support to engage and influence the Council.
Efforts to bring together California Native Americans intra or inter-tribally to engage with the Council process or to engage in independent truth and healing work with and among tribes.
Healing: Support for traditional healing programs or efforts connected to tribal or intra-tribal Truth and Healing processes.

Eligibility

California Native American tribes (Note: non-federally recognized tribes are eligible to apply through a 501(c)(3) or be fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3).)Tribes applying through a 501(c)(3) must submit a letter of support or approval from the Tribal governing body, or provide contact information for a Tribal point of contact. If there are extenuating circumstances, please share more details in an attachment as part of your proposal.California Native American-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, coalitions, or projects fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3) based in California.Native American-led defined: the organization’s Board of Directors and Executive leadership must be majority California Native-led, and must primarily service California Natives.California Native-led organizations, coalitions or projects must name and provide Letters of Support from the CA tribe(s) they represent or propose to engage, or tribally-affiliated references.

Ineligibility

Individuals are not eligible for funding at this time.
Funding must be used for charitable purposes (no lobbying).
Funding cannot be used for efforts in opposition to other tribes or tribal entities.