Indigenous Partnerships

Values

As a non-profit organization supporting the restoration of ceded and unceded Indigenous lands, we aim to build meaningful relationships with Native Nations and Indigenous communities across the regions where we work.

We believe that acknowledging the lands we’re on, the Peoples who call them home, and the principles of Tribal sovereignty and self-determination are a necessary first step in that process.

For us, the Forest Resilience Bond starts with learning about a landscape, how it’s been stewarded, and the Indigenous Peoples’ relationship to it. Blue Forest’s role is to provide project development support and financing to support the community’s vision for land stewardship to be implemented.

We invite you to read our land acknowledgment and to contact us if you’d like to know more about our collaborative forest restoration work.

Check it out here.

Partnerships

While developing each Forest Resilience Bond, we conduct due diligence to ensure Tribal support of the project, develop a relationship with Native Nations to the extent they are interested, support partners in expanding Tribal partnerships for project development and/or implementation, and when of interest, support Tribal stewardship priorities through thought partnership, funding exploration, and financing exploration.

We partner with organizations, such as the Lomakatsi Restoration Project, to promote Tribal workforce training and development and support Tribal partnerships in collaborative forest and watershed restoration. You can learn about examples of partnerships here and here.

We recognize that the integration of Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK), like cultural fire – which has been used since time immemorial by Indigenous peoples – is essential for successful collaborative forest resilience projects. We partner with Indigenous cultural practitioners to build our understanding of Indigenous stewardship values and support ITEK-centered restoration projects.

If interested in learning more about how we partner with Native Nations and organizations, reach out to Indigenouspartnership@blueforest.org.