Indigenous peoples, also known as first peoples, aboriginal peoples or native peoples, are ethnic groups who are the original inhabitants of a given region. Indigenous societies are found in every inhabited climate zone and continent of the world.
Indigenous peoples are often faced with threats to their sovereignty, economic well-being and their access to the resources on which their cultures depend.
Land is the main resource that has been taken from these people – to be used for development, drilling, or logging.
Grand Circle Foundation and the Alnoba Lewis Family Foundation partner with Indigenous activists and leaders to identify threats to the preservation of local lands and find ways to protect these sacred places.
The Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Uintah and Ouray Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute tribes have formally united as the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition to win a presidential proclamation establishing a 1.9 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in the landscape stretching from Canyonlands National Park to the San Juan River in southeastern Utah
Learn MoreThe Olof Palme Prize 2022 is awarded to Patricia Gualinga, a leader of the Kichwa People of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Learn MoreOur most recently funded project is to support the stingless bee project for the Maijuna Tribe in the Peruvian Amazon. Today, there are only 450 Maijuna individuals left living in four villages in a large, forested area between the Napo and Putumayo Rivers. The honey is thought to be medicinal, and provides an alternative sustainable income to deforestation.
In the Andean highlands of Ecuador, north of the capital of Quito, the people of Chilcapamba make their living by farming and creating handcrafts—which they sell at the famous Otavalo market, located 30 minutes away.
OAT associates helped them build a marketplace of their own.