On an annual basis, the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery selects an Indigenous Repair Partner and offers 60% of all undesignated funds we raise up through $15,000 per fiscal year to this partner group. This funding mechanism arises from our organization’s commitment to reparative justice.
Reparative justice, in our practice, includes but is not limited to the redistribution of wealth from those who have benefited from the Doctrine of Discovery (mostly white settlers and settler-led organizations) toward those who have been most impacted by the structural violence of land theft and settler colonialism (Indigenous peoples). Another purpose of the Repair Partner initiative is to further engage and deepen relationships with Indigenous-led organizations in our joint effort toward liberation.
Repair Partners 2024-25
This year the Coalition chose three Repair Partners: Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community, Tewa Women United Grandmother’s Circle, and Great Plains Action Society’s Honor Native Land Fund.
Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community
Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community is a small group of local Dakota people who have been trying for 30 years to get federal recognition and to obtain land for a permanent community center.
They host cultural and language classes, host a local wacipi (pow wow) and have monthly inipi ceremony (sweat lodge). Their stated mission: “To preserve, protect, and promote the Dakota culture for future generations.”
In 2002, the MMDTC membership participated in a comprehensive strategic planning session that resulted in the development of seven (7) long-range goals striving to: Acquire a land base so we can build a community center. Obtain federal recognition. Maintain a tribal office in Mendota. Promote and support the preservation of the Dakota culture, including protecting sites of cultural significance to the Dakota people. Promote a better understanding between the Native American community and the public. Teach community members and others the Dakota language. Develop self-sufficiency through in-house business.
Tewa Women United Grandmother’s Circle
The Grandmother’s circle of Tewa Women United aims to influence every program and project of Tewa Women United, so that the work is done in a good way consistent with Tewa values, incorporating interdependence and culture into all activities.
The Grandmother’s Circle mentors the young so that they walk alongside Elders who share cultural wisdom, values and beliefs of the Tewa so that beloved community can be shared for generations to come.
Generational healing is being able to address historical trauma, so we can unpack the hurts and pains that were inflicted, and we have been carrying inside us so we haven’t been able to release it. We help our activists, staff, volunteers and community begin healing from historical trauma so that each can function in their wholeness in beloved community. We also help our young people to hold contradictions so that they can have a posture of loving, caring and sharing in both worlds: the Native and the world of the Dominant Culture.
Great Plains Action Society – Honor Native Land Fund
The Honor Native Land Fund for rematriation is a project of the Great Plains Action Society.
Description: “We are a collective of Indigenous organizers of the Great Plains working to resist and Indigenize colonial institutions, ideologies, and behaviors. Our homelands are located in the vast grassland of Turtle Island situated between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River and stretching from the Northern Tundra to the Gulf of Mexico.”
Learn about the Great Plains Action Society: https://www.greatplainsaction.org/
Learn about the Honor Native Land Fund: https://honornativelandfund.org/
Past Repair Partners
Sararo Ecotourism and SIHF 2023 – 2024
*In 2023 the Coalition chose two Repair Partners: Sararo Ecotourism and Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF). SIHF was our repair partner in 2019-20, see more information about them below.
The Sararo Ecotourism Community-Based Development Program is located in the village of Zabalo, Ecuador. Sararo is the Cofán word for giant river otter.
This program keeps people on the land, youth in the village, and enables the Cofán to maintain their traditional life ways of hunting, fishing, gathering, cooking and artisan craft making.
Learn more: https://www.cofan.org/ecotours
The village of Zabalo has approximately 200 inhabitants. The community has legal title to about 160,000 hectares of primary rain forest surrounding the village. The forest is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. The Cofán consider themselves the “guardians of the forest”.
This program has encouraged young families to remain on the land, and the funds would provide a significant boost during a difficult time, helping stabilize the program and providing a viable alternate to employment in extractive industries or narcotrafficking.
Apache Stronghold 2022 – 2023
Apache Stronghold is a group led by the San Carlos Apache and their allies. They are engaged in religious and legal efforts to defend their sacred site of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel (Oak Flat) from being destroyed by a multinational copper mining company.
Website: http://apache-stronghold.com/
Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, in the Tonto National Forest of Arizona, is a part of the ancestral, sacred land of the San Carlos Apache and other local indigenous nations. This rich desert ecosystem is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property, and was protected from mining in 1955 by President Eisenhower.
Despite Chi’chil Bildagoteel’s cultural and spiritual significance, two of the world’s largest multinational mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP and their American subsidiary Resolution Copper, are poised to decimate the land with a mining technique that would collapse the area into a one-mile-wide, 1000-foot-deep crater. The mine would not only desecrate indigenous sacred sites and completely destroy the topography, it would also heavily deplete and pollute the area’s water resources. In previous years, all thirteen attempts to turn the land over to Resolution Copper were defeated in Congress. However, in 2014, two senators made a backroom deal and attached a “midnight rider” into a must-pass defense spending bill, trading the land to Resolution Copper.
The Apache Stronghold, an Apache-led organization, along with both indigenous and settler allies have managed to temporarily postpone the swap until now with prayer, action and lawsuits; however, the land is still at critical risk of being turned over to Resolution Copper. The Save Oak Flat Act (H.R. 1884/S. 915) was reintroduced to Congress in 2021 and would guarantee long-term protection for Chi’chil Bildagoteel by repealing the law that allowed for the land-swap. It is imperative that enough voices reach Congress in support of the Save Oak Flat Act to preserve this sacred land.
Colectivo In Laak Le Ixiimó 2021 – 2022
The Colectivo In Laak Le Ixiimó (CILLI) is a group of Maya seed-savers, organizing to improve the health and wellbeing of Yook’ol Kab (the land-water interrelationship that sustains the world). The phrase Colectivo In Laak Le Ixiimó can be understood in English as the Our Sibling, Corn Collective.
Hopelchén, Campeche, Mexico
The organizing efforts of our Maya partners in Campeche have been coordinated over recent years first through independent native seed committees, then the Ka’ Kuxtal Much Meyaj organization, and now continue through the In Laak Le Ixiimó Collective.
Our work together
Together with a working group composed of representatives from the Coalition’s Structural Change Committee we have coordinated joint campaigns, webinars, and strategic media outreach. A selection of these efforts include:
- A conversation on Maya-Mennonite connections, published in Anabaptist Witness.
- A series of webinars on decolonization, Indigenous self-determination, and the Doctrine of Discovery.
- Support for supply-chain accountability legislation in the European Union and member states.
- Interviews in the evangelical Mennonite Spanish-language podcast Merienda Menonita.
- Contributed essays to Die Mennonitsche Post, a German-language newspaper with readership in Low-German-speaking Mennonite colonies across the Americas.
- A joint delegation to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations in New York.
- An essay published in Sojourners Magazine.
Makoce Ikikcupi 2020 – 2021
Makoce Ikikcupi, meaning Land Recovery, is a project of Reparative Justice on Dakota land in Minisota Makoce.
Minnesota, United States
From website: “The Makoce Ikikcupi project seeks to bring some of our relatives home, re-establish our spiritual and physical relationship with our homeland, and ensure the ongoing existence of our People. Our cultural survival depends on it.”
Learn more: makoceikikcupi.com
Suriname Indigenous Health Fund 2019 – 2020
Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF): Indigenous-led human rights and public health advocacy in the Guyana Shield.
Suriname
SIHF is a small, independent international NGO with volunteer contributors from countries in North America, South America and Europe. All SIHF projects are led by Indigenous partners.
