BY TFN STAFF

North American Indigenous communities are calling upon deep connections to history, place and culture to develop distinctive forms of economic revitalization and community wealth-building.

We invite you to join our next learning network webinar, Strengthening the Circle: Indigenous Approaches to Holistic & Inclusive Economies at 2 p.m. ET Jan. 20, to learn how native leaders and community members are integrating traditional tools of community development with culturally specific strategies for long-term investment and sustainable impact.

The Amskapi Piikani (Blackfeet Nation), a tribe whose territory historically spanned from Montana into Canada along the Rocky Mountains, but whose reservation now only covers 1.5 million acres in northwestern Montana, are using food and natural resource management to drive economic renewal.

Through Blackfeet ways of knowing, being and planning, Blackfeet Nation members have developed an Agricultural Resource Management Plan that incorporates language and cultural revitalization, buffalo restoration, local healthy food sources, a new tribal protected area and a multi-species meat processing facility.

At the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, which lies on 444,000 acres in southeastern Montana, People’s Partners for Community Development is tapping tribal connections to support entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency to create long-term financial strength that can echo forward for generations. Since incorporating as the Community Development Finance Institution, the organization has originated more than 500 loans totaling in excess of half a million dollars to help tribal members launch small businesses on the reservation.

On the Crow Indian Reservation in south central Montana, Plenty Doors Community Development Corporation works to strengthen their community through business, entrepreneurship, and community development. They are devoted to creating thriving communities through a strong diverse economy while preserving the unique cultural and environmental qualities of our community.

Participants will come away from the webinar with an appreciation of the power of culturally-based revitalization and its application to communities across a range of settings.

The People’s Partner for Community Development is a Native-led non-profit organization serving the communities of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana that helps create “a stronger reservation economy while maintaining strong connections to our land, our traditional values and our cultural history.” Photo credit (above and at top of post): Peoplespartners.org

Strengthening the Circle: Indigenous Approaches to Holistic, Inclusive Economies
Jan. 20 at 2 p.m. ET
*Register here.*

Speakers:
Loren BirdRattler, Project Manager, Blackfeet Agriculture Resource Management Plan
Charlene Johnson, Executive Director, Plenty Doors CDC
Sharon Small, Executive Director, People’s Partner for Community Development

Moderator:
Bonnie Sachatello-Sawyer, Executive Director, Hopa Mountain