The Indigenous Stewardship Network (ISN) is an emerging non-profit organization created in 2022 under a Corporate Charter through the Yurok Tribe. This Native-controlled and Native-led organization was established to bring people together who are committed to advancing community health and wellbeing, traditions and cultural values through Indigenous-led stewardship. While gatherings on these important issues have occurred informally, there is a need for an organized and dedicated support system to coordinate efforts more intentionally for Indigenous land stewardship practitioners in what is colonially known as California.
Indigenous Stewardship Network
Our focus is to establish and leverage a network to develop strategies, models, investments as well as other opportunities that strengthens Indigenous stewardship.
ISN’s Purpose
Indigenous Stewardship Network (ISN) serves as a network, established to develop strategies, models, investments as well as other opportunities that strengthens Indigenous stewardship. This stewardship centers around the essential ecological and practice areas of fire, land, and water. Environmental change has altered ecosystems, the introduction of invasive species and the subsequent decline of native species have caused ecological harm, climate change has disrupted the earth’s balance and the removal of fire from the landscape has imperiled our ecosystems and communities.
Indigenous-Led Stewardship
Indigenous stewardship traditions are increasingly recognized as a solution. With these disruptive changes taking place there is an emerging opportunity to bring a collective Indigenous voice to this movement. ISN is uniquely positioned to support this work by creating a network to improve access and resources for Indigenous-led stewardship.
Photo Credit: *Cultural Fire Management Council
Native-Founded, Led and Operated
ISN is an Indigenous-led organization founded and incorporated in 2022 under the business code of the Yurok Tribe, and received status as an IRS 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in January 2023.
The way that our ancestors took care of mother earth is a way that we must return to if we're going to survive climate change. This work must be indigenous lead. And that's a message that we have to pound home every day...with that comes responsibility and opportunity.
Val Lopez, Board Member
In the conversations we had, the need to work together was emphasized. All of us have been denied access, and faced diminished rights to steward, yet we still persist because we are guided by own traditional laws, based on our own systems with qualifications that comes from intergenerational learning and protocols.
Don Hankins, Board Member