The Tribal Trust Foundation (TTF) was founded in 1998. For twenty-five years we have been identifying sustainable grass roots cultural preservation projects to support Indigenous people around the world. The TTF partners with local organizations and businesses whose experience and existing relationships with specific tribes can sustain joint initiatives over the long-term to help preserve the living arts and traditional wisdom of Indigenous peoples.
As an organization, we listen, learn from, and respond to requests for cultural preservation. Most recently, Barbara Savage, TTF Founder & CEO attended the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples Global Conference in Mérida, Mexico. This unique conference brought together foundations and Indigenous representatives to share their knowledge, concerns, and requests for funding. There we were reminded of the importance of cultivating value-based relationships with Indigenous Peoples and supporting the diversity of their self-determined priorities for their collective lands, waters, and territories of life.
TTF continues to prioritize initiatives that address the loss of languages within Indigenous communities. There is an urgent need for the transfer of Indigenous knowledge from Elders to youth in their own language before they disappear forever.
With your support, TTF is facilitating inter-generational Indigenous cultural and language preservation initiatives. In NAMIBIA we are working with local partners to establish an Indigenous school that will help San youth learn their native language, hunting, and gathering skills, and healing trance dance practices. In BHUTAN, TTF is recording Monpa native language and stories, assisting in bamboo reintegration, building a heritage museum, and facilitating a program to domesticate herbs used in Monpa traditional medicine. In PERU, we are supporting a project which teaches essential components of Shipibo-Konibo art, including making fishing tools, teaching the native language through song, and medicinal plant and healing workshops.
PLEASE HELP SUPPORT THE TRIBAL TRUST FOUNDATION BY:
1) Join us on Friday, April 7th for a hike and gourmet luncheon at Spirit Pine Sanctuary in the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley. This special lunch features three courses prepared by Spirit Pine’s kitchen featuring local ingredients from their beloved agricultural community members of Santa Ynez Valley. A tour of the breathtaking preserve and an optional hike to see the spring wildflowers in bloom will follow. The cost is $225, please learn more by emailing us here.
Spirit Pine Sanctuary, Santa Ynez Valley
2) Listen and learn from Indigenous peoples by reading articles, listening to podasts and watching documentary films about their cultures and traditions.
The Tribal Trust Foundation is located in the unceded homelands of the Chumash People and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. By recognizing these communities, we attempt to honor their legacies, their lives, and descendants. To learn more about the Indigenous People’s land on which your home or work sits, visit: native-land.ca
