For over a year, Honor the Earth has been on a meaningful journey—redefining who we are, building an environment where staff are safe and cared for, and dreaming up a vision for where we are headed next.
This journey has led us to a renewed emphasis on Indigenous Sovereignty and Land Back as our North Star, guiding us in all the work we do. In a time when the Palestinian liberation movement is showing cracks in the foundations of colonial institutions, it is more crucial than ever that we stand together and oppose the global forces that maintain dominance over Indigenous Peoples. Honor the Earth’s rebirth is designed to do exactly that: help our communities resist exploitation and preparing future generations to lead us. From our fresh mission and vision, to our new all-Indigenous women board and redefined programming, our 2024 annual report is a guide for the future of Honor the Earth.
FROM DEPUTY DIRECTOR NADIA TANOUS:
This past year has been a period of recouping and rebuilding, positioning us to envision the next 30 years of Honor the Earth while fulfilling our responsibilities as Indigenous Peoples to our future generations and our planet.
We have navigated a major operational transformation, ensuring that our processes are aligned with our principles, our programs, and our personnel. This has meant getting into fiscal, legal, and operational compliance and building out organizational processes that form the bedrock of our programming and the frontline efforts we support. We are investing in all of our staff to be cross-trained and to engage in the political visioning side of our work, because we are a team of committed organizers who inspire each other. We are excited to hear from you – our supporters – on our rebrand, improved operational practices, and reimagined programming. This is just the beginning!
A SEASON OF REBIRTH
2024 marks a year of rebirth for Honor the Earth.
We have made important changes over the past year, including a new Executive Director, bringing on an all Indigenous Women-led board, designing a full rebrand, and crafting a fresh mission and vision for our work. Amidst this transformation, we have decided to shift our focus away from local struggles in Minnesota and towards supporting grassroots organizing across and beyond Turtle Island.
As we enter this new era, we honor the Anishinaabe roots of Honor the Earth and take many lessons with us. Honor has supported and led some tremendous organizing for land, water, and Indigenous sovereignty on Anishinaabewaki over the years. It has also been an imperfect organization that we know has caused harm. While we continue to rebuild the organizational culture of Honor and
ground in our principles of justice and accountability, we are ready to step beyond the organization’s past. Honor the Earth has been just one organization in a rich ecosystem of resistance and transformation in Minnesota, and we know this powerful work will continue in our absence.
Moving forward, we will redirect our efforts toward nationwide organizing initiatives, rooted in supporting Indigenous communities and grassroots organizers. We will be challenging new threats to land and water like Green Colonialism, fighting for Land Back for Indigenous communities across the country, and continuing to stand firm in our solidarity with the people of Palestine as they fight for their right to return to their ancestral homelands. We are committed to
supporting frontline communities as they lead their unique struggles for justice. Based on transparent communication with the communities we serve, Honor is positioned to uplift local struggles to a national audience and make strategic decisions about how to allocate our resources across Turtle Island.
With renewed emphasis on the root causes of our struggles — white supremacy, racial capitalism and settler-colonialism — we are confident that Honor the Earth will be a stronger and more effective force for environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty.
Thank you for your continued support as we work toward a world that truly honors Mother Earth and all its Peoples.
EHonor the Earth is rooted in resistance imperialism by defending the lifeways and sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples globally. We are dedicated to resourcing, empowering, popularizing, and amplifying struggles for the land and all life, while investing in future generations to carry forward our struggle for liberation.
Honor the Earth is creating a world Indigenous Sovereignty is recognized, respected, and upheld.
We envision a future where communities thrive with honor, abundance, and in right relationship with Mother Earth.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Honor the Earth’s leadership team was honored to welcome new board members at the start of 2024. In many Indigenous societies, past and present, matriarchal leadership is critical to decision-making and the execution of equal justice and strong governance.
We are thrilled to introduce Honor the Earth’s new board, composed entirely of Indigenous women. Please meet these five outstanding Native women: You’re going to see and hear a lot from them as they forge a new legacy at Honor the Earth.
Amy Sazue, Chair, Sicangu/Oglala Lakota Nation
Amy Sazue, Sicangu/Oglala Lakota, is the Executive Director of the Remembering the Children Memorial in Rapid City, South Dakota, a memorial dedicated to the children who lost their lives at the Rapid City Indian School.
Amy has almost 20 years of experience working with Native American nonprofits in and around the Black Hills region of South Dakota, primarily focusing on work with Indigenous youth. Her work with Native nonprofits has been informed by her experience growing up on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations and living in Rapid City for the last 20 years where she is raising her four children alongside her husband, Tracy.
Amy is an active and engaged community member and advocate for equity in the Rapid City community and continually seeks opportunities and collaborations that contribute to a just and equitable community. She is currently a commissioner for the Rapid City Human Relations Commission and a board member of the Rapid City Public School Foundation and the Rapid City Arts Council. Amy holds 3 associate degrees in early childhood education from Bay Mills Community College, a bachelor’s in education from Oglala Lakota College, a Certified Fundraising Manager (CFRM) graduate certificate from the Indiana University Lily School of Philanthropy and is working to complete a Masters in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from Arizona State University.
Eve Reyes-Aguirre, Secretary Izkaloteka, Mexica, Azteca
Eve Reyes-Aguirre is an Indigenous grassroots community organizer, advocate, wife, mother and grandmother. Eve resides in O’odham territory, also known as Phoenix, where she is a part of an all-Indigenous owned and operated 501c3 non-profit, Tonatierra, which has served as An Embassy of Indigenous Peoples for over 25 years. As an Indigenous woman, Eve also represents the women in her Calpolli (traditional community) annually at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and has been a member of the Global Indigenous Women’s Caucus for over 15 years.
HONOR THE EARTH
Sharon Lungo, Treasurer, Kuskatan (El Salvador)
Sharon Lungo is a practitioner of facilitation, training, organizing, direct action, and leadership development with over 25 years’ experience. She is an Indigenous, fat, disabled mother and propagator of racial and social justice strategies. Her family and ancestry are from Kuskatan (El Salvador). Sharon has cultivated relationships with local, national, and international organizations across various sectors of the movement.
She is the former executive director and current trainer of the Ruckus Society, a founding member of the Indigenous Peoples Power Project (IP3), a coordinating member in the Global Women’s Strike, and is a current board member of Asociación Nacional Indígena Salvadoreña (ANIS).
Betty Lyons, Onondaga Nation
Gaeñ hia uh, Betty Lyons, President & Executive Director of the American Indian Law Alliance (AILA), is an Indigenous and environmental activist and citizen of the Onondaga Nation who has worked for the Onondaga Nation for over 20 years.
Betty serves as a member of the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee and recently helped negotiate the White House’s recognition of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy and their cultural ambassadors, the Haudenosaunee Nationals.
Betty joined the AILA in 2014. Over the past ten years, she has worked on numerous issues, including advocating for the Rights of Mother Earth, Treaty support, advocating for Indigenous Nations and peoples at the United Nations, and teaching the Indigenous history of women’s rights. She has also worked with the National Institute for Law and Justice on helping families find closure around Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S).
Lenna Zahran Nasr, Palestinian
Lenna Zahran Nasr is a Palestinian/Lebanese organizer from Jerusalem & Bethlehem born and raised in exile on occupied Tickanwa-tic land (Central Texas). She believes that Indigenous sovereignty and Global Indigenous Solidarity is a key component of principled anti-imperialism and the creation of a better world.
She brings experience in building out student and movement institutions focused on advocacy and agency from the grassroots. Her specialty and passion are political education pedagogy and movement culture.
Since 2017, she has played a critical role supporting the student movement at UT Austin and Nationally across the so-called United States. She regularly leads political education workshops for the Arab community on Indigenous struggle on Turtle Island, Puerto Rican struggle, Black struggle, the role of youth and students in the Palestinian struggle, and demilitarism.
In 2018, she co-organized and participated in the historic Indigenous Delegation to Palestine, which brought Palestinian youth living in exile on Turtle Island and young Indigenous land-defenders and water-protectors (Kumeyaay, Yaqui, Diné, Kānaka Maoli) together to Palestine. She currently serves as a lead organizer with Palestinian Youth Movement.
THE HONOR TEAM
KRYSTAL TWO BULLS
Ogalala Lakota Northern Cheyenne Executive Director
Oglala Lakota
Program Manager of Ecology and Research
Palestinian Deputy Director
Absentee Shawnee/Oglala Lakota National Campaigns Director
Indigenous communities. Through our training hub and capacity support programs, we invest in Indigenous communities across Turtle Island by skilling up the next generation of leaders.
This support extends to treaty organizing spaces, in which we provide on-the-ground support to Indigenous communities asserting their sovereignty. We also support Indigenous artists and culture bearers, which have been a cornerstone of Honor the Earth’s past, and we continue this legacy into the future.
Training Hub
Honor the Earth is building toolkits for our communities to use in defending their homelands and building a better world for future generations. Through the Training Hub, we’ve created a new training model that positions grassroots organizers embedded in their local communities as leaders of their respective struggles.
Our Training Hub is where we develop organizing skills that can be deployed in Indigenous communities around Turtle Island.
We are wary of the tendency for non-profits to “helicopter in” and
grab the spotlight. The organizer training hub allows us to use our resources in order to train the next generations of Indigenous leaders, who will ultimately carry on our struggles for sovereignty and Land Back.
2023 Summer Camp
As part of the training hub last summer, Honor the Earth held its first ever Organizer Summer Camp. We invited social and environmental justice organizers, new and experienced, to join Honor the Earth for a three day training. The weekend was
filled with workshops, delicious food, belly laughs, strategizing sessions, and even a few field trips to communities impacted by a destructive nickel-sulfide mine - which actively threatens Anishinaabe homelands and manoomin.
As we built deep and meaningful relationships with each other, we began to imagine the movements we are building alongside one another. This initial Organizer Summer Camp was the first in what will become a new national program, with organizer trainings all across Turtle Island.
CAPACITY SUPPORT PROGRAM
The Capacity Support Program is a container for providing resources to Indigenous communities and organizations across Turtle Island. This includes direct financial support and on-the-ground support from Honor the Earth organizers. It also includes direct purchasing, contracting, individual sponsorship, travel support, mini grants, and a fiscal sponsorship program.
We are also committed to using our national media platform to uplift narratives of Indigenous issues rooted in messaging that comes from the grassroots groups we support. In the past year we provided capacity support to a range of communities and programs, including:
• Westwin Resistance
• March on D.C. for Palestine
• Local basketball teams and cheer squads for Native Youth
• An Indigenous delegation to Cop City
• Communities resisting the lithium mine at Thacker Pass
• Travel expenses for activists going to frontlines
• Climate week in NYC
• Funded the Yesah Tribunal re the Mountain Valley Pipeline
• Prayer Horse Rides
• NoDAPL Rally in DC
• WILD 12 Congress
• Oglala Lakota Chapter - International Indigenous Youth Council
TREATY ORGANIZING
Indigenous Sovereignty is the foundation of Honor the Earth’s politics. Treaties signed between Indigenous Nations and colonial governments are one of our strongest tools to uphold the remaining rights we have.
At the same time, we recognize that not all Indigenous Nations signed or ratified treaties. We also recognize that there are Indigenous Nations that have never entered into agreements with any colonial government to retain their inherent rights and remain resolute in that stance. Lastly, there are Indigenous Nations who have signed treaties with each other. Our goal is to educate a new generation of Indigenous organizers about the power, nuances, and concerns around treaties.
In the past year, we have supported several Palestine Solidarity resolutions in treaty organizing spaces. On December 14, 2023, the Oceti Sakowin Treaty
Council unanimously passed a sweeping measure in support of the Palestinian people of Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire. In the Resolution, the Treaty Council, representing all of the approximately 49 Tribes within the Oceti Sakowin territory, cited their peoples’ own historical genocidal experience at the hands of occupying U.S. forces, and recognized the Israeli government as engaging in genocide and ethnic cleansing in a similar fashion, in real time. Honor the Earth staff provided on the ground and narrative support to organizers advocating for this resolution and others.
UNITED NATIONS
Honor the Earth is engaged in organizing at the U.N. to mandate our treaties in international law. Our goal is for Indigenous Nations to have equal footing as the U.S. and other colonial nations.
We know that the UN will not set us free, which is why our focus at the UN is on changing the battlefield and simultaneously utilizing every possible avenue available to change the material conditions of our people.
Our work at the UN is not done in isolation as we know our efforts are futile without concurrently supporting Indigenous communities on Turtle Island and across Unci Maka to access their basic needs. This year, Honor the Earth has attended UN assemblies in New York, Kenya, and Ottawa.
At the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Honor supported Global Indigenous Youth in calling on the Permanent Forum to convene an Expert Working Group that explicitly connects the impacts of ethnic cleansing and forced removal of Indigenous Youth and Peoples from their ancestral homelands to the worsening climate crisis.
A secondary goal of our UN work is educating and teaching Indigenous communities about the realm of international law and translating international policy and politics to our communities on the ground.
DEPARTMENT OF ECOLOGY & RESEARCH
Honor the Earth’s Department of Ecology and Research seeks to integrate Indigenous science and STEM with activism efforts to preserve and restore ecosystems while respecting Indigenous sovereignty and cultural heritage.
Through community engagement, education, and research, we strive to uphold Indigenous values of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and sustainability. We provide resources and capacity for community-led science efforts that seek to protect lands, waters and all living beings through grassroots, international, and intervention mechanisms.
LAND BACK DATA MAPPING
The Land Back story map is an ongoing project to map the Land Back movement on Turtle Island. This includes mapping historical land grabs by the U.S. government and how the legacy of extraction on Native lands manifests in the present day. By telling the story of past and ongoing Land Back campaigns, we hope to set the stage for successes to come.
SCIENCE WARRIORS
The Science Warrior Fellowship Program aims to cultivate scientist organizers within Indigenous Nations and their communities. The program offers a funded fellowship to 5-7 Native scientists to conduct research on their homelands.
These projects are all tied to the land and health of Indigenous communities. Honor the Earth invests in our Science Warriors with a stipend, supplies, and training over the course of a summer, with the intention of bringing together science and activism. At the end of the program, all fellows come together for an in-person conference to present their findings with each other and relevant stakeholders.
OCETI SAKOWIN EXPLORATORY PROJECT
The Oceti Sakowin Exploratory project aims to effectively monitor the impacts of climate change and align them with Lakota treaty rights and Indigenous Peoples Rights. Our objectives include conducting a qualitative assessment to comprehend the environmental and health implications, developing accessible educational materials that are culturally and politically pertinent, and applying engineering problem-solving principles to benefit the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
We will then analyze the gathered data and leverage tools like ArcGIS to create story maps illustrating the locations of water and soil testing sites alongside traditional ecological knowledge of these areas. Furthermore, we are committed to capacity-building within the community by training tribal college interns in water and soil testing methodologies. Our goal is to collect approximately 100 water and soil samples across the Oceti Sakowin Territory, providing valuable insights into the environmental dynamics and fostering a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between climate change and Indigenous treaty rights.
TIMES SQUARE LAND BACK MURAL
On the morning of Tuesday, September 19th 2023 , Indigenous peoples on the frontlines of the climate crisis on Turtle Island took over New York’s Times Square to paint a giant mural with the message, “No Green Colonialism; Land Back NOW!”
Honor the Earth’s national campaigns are at the forefront of combating climate chaos and in our communities by standing firm against Green Colonialism, which includes the false solutions within the so-called “green energy transition.”
By staying rooted in , we are uniquely positioned to change the way 501(c)3s engage with movement spaces while simultaneously fighting extractivism, which we identify as colonialism and imperialism. We are also pushing back against neoliberalism in our movement and nationalizing our narrative in order to popularize, normalize, and advance
No Green Colonialism
Green Colonialism is a new form of settler-colonialism rooted in so-called “green extraction” that impacts the lands and lives of Indigenous communities globally. Green colonialism manifests in environmental projects or initiatives that are described as conservation or sustainable development but that instead perpetuate and reinforce colonial power dynamics that further marginalize Indigenous peoples worldwide.
These “green” projects involve the extraction of natural resources, land grabs, displacement of Indigenous populations, and imposition of colonial conservation without respecting Indigenous knowledge, needs, rights, sovereignty, and Free Prior and Informed Consent. Honor the Earth is organizing against Green Colonialism on a number of fronts.
No Fossil Fuels
As Honor the Earth expands our focus to confront the new frontiers of extraction that Green Colonialism poses, we haven’t lost sight of the organization’s historic fight against the fossil fuel industry.
In fact, we know many of the same companies that drill for oil and frack for natural gas are now turning their attention to profiting off of the false solutions to the climate crisis. Honor will continue to support grassroots communities resisting all forms of extraction in their lands.
Land Back is our North Star, guiding us in our fight for sovereignty and liberation. Land Back is the political movement of Indigenous Peoples reclaiming sovereignty over homelands from colonial states.
Land Back is also about reclaiming relationships and Indigenous values rooted in the land itself. This means having a say over our bodies, our land, our peoples, and our nations that predate colonization.
True Land Back requires an abolitionist focus, dismantling the colonial systems of racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and settler-colonialism and replacing them with Indigenous land practices that work for all Peoples.
We contend that Land Back is a solution to the climate crisis. This stands in contrast to the false solutions that perpetuate the same systems of extractivism with a new “green mask.” Unlike systems of colonial
extractivism, Indigenous Peoples have land practices rooted in knowledge of their specific homelands that sustain our human and non-human relatives alike.
This is why we protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity despite making up only 4% of the global population. Restoring right relationships with land, based on Indigenous principles, is the only way forward in the face of escalating ecological collapse.
WESTWIN RESISTANCE
We are offering capacity support to the Westwin Resistance fight against a cobalt/nickel refinery planned in Lawton, Oklahoma on Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Caddo, Wichita, and Delaware lands.
Westwin Resistance is an Indigenous-led grassroots coalition of tribal citizens, environmental scientists, tribal law experts, and concerned citizens. Honor the Earth is supporting Westwin Resistance by offering capacity support. In this support, we always defer to local leadership and uplift messaging that is strategic in a local context. Honor’s role is to offer tools, such as building out a website, helping to draft press releases and making strategic connections, while simultaneously garnering national support with our social media audience and national connections.
We are also developing a “Transition” Mining Tracker to analyze the national scale of green colonialism manifesting in our so-called “green energy transition.” This tracker will give us a broad understanding of the scope and scale of false-transition mines, allowing us to intervene on the narrative front. The tracker will also equip us to make strategic decisions about when, where, and how to allocate Honor the Earth’s resources for Indigenous communities resisting green colonialism.
From Turtle Island to Palestine
As Indigenous People, we stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for decolonization. As we battle against ongoing oppression and the erosion of our rights and identities, we are reminded that our struggles are deeply intertwined from Turtle Island to Palestine. Our solidarity reaches across continents, as we unite in our quest for justice, self-determination, and the preservation of our cultures and lands. In the past year, Honor the Earth has undertaken political education work on the interconnectedness of our joint struggles and provided on-the-ground support to Palestinian organizers.
The “U.S” and “Israel” have propaganda machines that distort the trajectories of colonialism, apartheid and genocide into a “both sides” narrative. In an effort to combat this misinformation campaign, Honor the Earth has created political education materials about our joint struggles for Indigenous sovereignty from Turtle Island to Palestine. In March we launched the “Turtle Island to Palestine” social media series, highlighting points of connection every week. We are also creating
a Turtle Island to Palestine toolkit, with in-depth analysis of settler-colonial regimes and the Indigenous liberation movements that oppose them.
In addition to our focus on political education, Honor the Earth has supported on-theground initiatives for a Free Palestine. We supported the March on Washington for Gaza in November and delivered speeches on Indigenous solidarity. We also drafted and supported resolutions
to tribal authorities that called for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The Oceti Sakowin Treaty Council unanimously passed this resolution in December, and under the leadership of the Oglala chapter of the International Indigenous Youth Council, the Oglala Sioux tribe passed a parallel resolution. As we fight for the liberation of our Peoples hand in hand, the recognition in our communities that Indigenous sovereignty includes Palestine is a powerful measure.
TELLING THE WHOLE STORY
Since October 7th, 2023, we’ve been using our social media channels to provide context, education, and connection between the genocide in Palestine and the one that took place on Turtle Island. Below is one example of what these posts have looked like. Find more on our Instagram or Facebook accounts.
COMMUNICATIONS
In line with Honor the Earth’s season of rebirth, we have redesigned our approach to communications in order to better align with the organization’s new values and principles. Our communications department serves as a crucial bridge between our grassroots organizing efforts and the broader public.
We narrate the breadth of Honor the Earth’s work and programs, engage our base in political education and uplift calls from frontline communities and grassroots organizers. Our approach to communication is grounded in the communities we are accountable to, with our amplification rooted in relationship and trust.
We understand that we, Indigenous and frontline communities, are best positioned to tell our own stories, and therefore, we commit to being the narrators of our own experiences, rather than relying on traditional media channels that often dilute or whitewash our message for mainstream consumption. In the next year, we will prioritize the development of original content across written, visual, and audio formats.
Over the past year, we used several powerful methods to convey the radical transformations of our leadership and staff and of our vision and mission. Our most public-facing assets – Honor’s logo, website and its social media channels on Facebook and Instagram – all underwent an inspired rebrand, using a fitting symbol found in nature.
The Fireweed flower – now Honor the Earth’s iconic brand image – is a powerful testament to resilience, representing the first blooms on the prairie after a fire. When it emerges from the earth, the fireweed comes back stronger and more vibrant than before. This isn’t just a change of aesthetics; it symbolizes a deeper transformation within our organization.
Fireweed flowers have many uses, especially in Native communities. Fireweed stems can be used as medicine, its petals can make tea and jelly, and its
roots are a food source. But these plants also help to reestablish other vegetation. We believe this is the perfect metaphor for Honor the Earth’s rebirth: We are setting ablaze the old ways, lighting a prairie fire for global change, and challenging the systems that prioritize profit over our planet and Peoples.
Our renewed mission places racial capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy at the root of the fight against climate and environmental challenges. With a vision deeply rooted in an Indigenous worldview, we refuse to back down.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Honor the Earth’s social media channels have been an effective and immediate way to share our news and vision with interested parties, from longtime allies to Native and Non-native communities to the newly curious about our mission.
Here are some highlights from the past year:
• While our Facebook growth and followers are steady, our most used social media channel is Instagram.
• We have diversified our audience and expanded it to include more youth: Our Instagram reach has increased by 37.1% over the fiscal year, underscoring the shift to a younger audience.
• Our largest Instagram audience is in New York City, followed by Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago.
• Our global reach (outside the U.S.) is increasing, especially in so-called Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France and Germany.
More timely recent posts include:
• Earth Day is about Land Back!
• A presentation to The 21st Session of the UN’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues by our own Anpo Jensen, and A Statement from the Global Indigenous Women’s Caucus, also at the UN recently.
Links to important news stories about Indigenous lands and Peoples are also included regularly in our social channels, keeping people informed about Honor’s mission to educate and engage on Land Back, Green Colonialism and Militarism, and Environmental Justice, especially in our Native communities. During Women’s History Month in March, we reflected on the principles of Indigenous feminism.
Honor also regularly uplifts important historical occasions like the recent 51st Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Occupation and the founding of AIM, plus marking the 500 years since the Indigenous Peoples in Iximulew (Guatemala) were invaded by the Spanish on February 20, 1524.
MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS
Honor the Earth often makes news at different levels, internationally, regionally and locally in Native and non-Native communities. But our history has taught that if we want to truly own our story, we have to tell it ourselves. In the past year, we’ve worked to make our website and external communications a reliable, stand-alone news resource for Indigenous Peoples and others through news releases, Op Eds, media advisories, and alerts.
In this past year of dramatic change, here are some highlights of how we’ve shared major stories, from internal Honor developments to campaign wins.
Oceti Sakowin Treaty Council Passes Sweeping Measure in Solidarity with the Palestinian People of Gaza: On December 14, 2023, on the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ territory of Hé Sapa “South Dakota,” the Oceti Sakowin (Sioux Nation) Treaty Council unanimously passed a sweeping measure in support of the Palestinian people of Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire and emergency aid for over two million residents of the Gaza Strip, half of whom are children.
A similar resolution and news release followed in March 2024: Statement on Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Great Oceti Sakowin Passage of Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People. The Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) of the great Oceti Sakowin, passed a resolution -14 to 1- in support of the Palestinian People. This decision comes after months of organizing by the Oglala Lakota youth, representing the Oglala chapter of the International Indigenous Youth Council (IIYC).
OPERATIONS
Amidst all of the transformation at Honor the Earth, we’ve spent a lot of careful time and energy restructuring our operations to build organizational practices that reflect our values and support our team. We have also taken steps to resolve cultures within the organization that have led to harm and mismanagement in the past.
As we look ahead to the upcoming year, we’re standing on a solid foundation of new policies and practices. Honor the Earth’s internal culture now mirrors the principles we are fighting for in the greater world.
FINANCE
Our Finance Team has had the duty of establishing a new way of accounting for a movement organization. We have to be in compliance while meeting the needs of our frontline, grassroots, Indigenous communities. This requires creativity and ingenuity and our team has risen to this challenge every step of the way.
LEGAL & COMPLIANCE
Honor the Earth maintains a robust legal team to ensure that we are equipped to handle all legal and compliance matters. We have had to navigate numerous complex legal issues in this past year of transition and have done our best to address them with integrity.
This year we resolved the lawsuit for sexual misconduct that Honor the Earth failed to take accountability for in the past. We paid out the full settlement amount to the plaintiff and covered their legal fees.
Within the past year we were also granted an Assurance by the Minnesota Attorney General affirming that the organization’s financial practices are sound and that adequate steps have been taken to correct the past mishandling of resources. In line with this assurance, we adhered to a court order to sever all ties with Winona LaDuke, Akiing 8th Fire, Anishinabe Agriculture Institute, and any other organizations affiliated with LaDuke outside of communication to separate the organization and to complete outstanding audits. We have ceased the employment of LaDuke’s family members and filled all positions with qualified replacements.
As part of the separation from Akiing and AAI we worked through routine audits filed jointly for past years with the other organizations to clarify the past financial relationships between the organizations and improve financial documentation at Honor the Earth as an independent organization moving forward.
We also brought on a new general counsel to help us navigate the ongoing separation from Akiing and AAI, as well as other emergent legal matters, appropriately.
HUMAN RESOURCES
In the past year, Honor the Earth’s human resources department has overhauled staff procedures and policies to create a new organizational culture, implement hiring practices that reflect our values, and confront past cultures of harm within the organization. We authored a new staff handbook that supports our staff with a human-centered workplace that includes flexible leave for cultural and family needs, space to pursue higher education and holistic career development, wellness benefits to supplement conventional health insurance, and more practices that reflect our values of a human-centered organizational culture. It also includes a robust new policy on sexual harassment to cultivate a healthy and safe organizational culture.
The new HR program strives to create and maintain a workplace and culture where all members of the organization feel valued through open communication and transparency. We aim to create an environment where every individual has the opportunity to thrive and contribute meaningfully to our collective mission.
DEVELOPMENT
Honor the Earth’s development department raises the funds necessary to fully support our programming efforts, staff, and expenses in order to achieve the organization’s mission and support Indigenous abundance.
However, we humbly acknowledge that these funds are not bound for Honor the Earth as an organization — rather, they are used to benefit the communities we serve.
For most of Honor’s existence, the development department has been in a reactive state, only able to submit invitation-based grants and unable to properly plan for long-term success. Over the past year, the development team spent its energy on optimizing our data management practices so we have a clear, accurate view of our funding and donors; partnering with InnoNative, an Indigenous consulting group, to build meaningful donor communication and revenue expansion strategies; and creating robust, actionable plans for an efficient largescale development department.
In the upcoming year, we plan to initiate our donor membership and appreciation programs, begin a capital campaign meant to significantly expand Honor’s capacity for the next generation, and hyperfocus onrebuilding meaningful relationships with our donors and funders.
DONOR SURVEY
Contact Information
Name
Donor Interests
What aspects of Honor’s work are you most excited about or believe to be most critical for Indigenous liberation? And why is this work important to you?
What are your current philanthropic priorities?
Please circle the types of organizations and causes that you have donated to in the past few years
Education
Arts
Environmental (air, water, land)
Racial Justice
LGBTQ & Gender Identity
Animals
Indigenous Sovereignty
Youth
Relationship with HTE & Communication Preferences
Disability Justice
Religion
Political Orgs
Crowdfunding/Mutual Aid
Natural Disasters
Humanitarian Aid
Other:
Would you be interested in having an occasional personal correspondence with an Honor the Earth team member, in addition to the usual public messages? (Circle One)
Yes No
Please circle the topics you would be interested in discussing with HTE staff
Honor’s current work and impact
Honor’s future projects
Additional types of giving or partnerships
Volunteering
General Political Education
Other
Relationship with HTE & Communication Preferences (cont.)
What suggestions do you have for HTE to better demonstrate the impact of your giving? Or What would make your relationship with Honor the Earth more meaningful and fulfilling?
Occasionally, Honor the Earth will host informative webinars for our donors, would you be interested in attending an informative webinar about the programs and impacts your giving is having at Honor the Earth?
Yes No Potentially
Interest in HTE’s additional income streams
If Honor the Earth were to have an opportunity for additional investments (a capital campaign for example), would you consider the opportunity to invest in our work above and beyond your normal giving?
Yes No Potentially
Would you be interested in discussing or planning a legacy gift (i.e., wills, trusts, bequests, estate giving) with Honor the Earth?
Yes No Potentially
As a method to ensure long-term financial stability for Honor the Earth, we hope to invest in, partner with, or develop our own separate for-profit business that sells goods or services that benefit Indigenous communities as well as provides an additional income stream for Honor the Earth — is this a program you would be interested in hearing more about and potentially supporting?
Yes No Potentially
Thank you for helping us form a complete understanding of our donors.
Please send completed surveys to Honor the Earth | PO Box 1531 | Lame Deer, MT 59043, or email a scanned copy to Raphael@honorearth.org. You can also complete the survey online at https://honorearth.org/donorsurvey
CLOSING STATEMENT
Honor the Earth is poised to continue our journey towards a reality where Indigenous sovereignty is achieved, rampant extraction is halted, and communities thrive in harmony with Mother Earth.
We are setting ablaze the old ways, lighting a prairie global change, and working to dismantle the systems that prioritize profit over our planet and The transformational changes outlined in this annual report are a call to action and a united front against oppression.
We invite you to stand with us and build a world in right relationship with Mother Earth. Together, we can nurture the new flowers in bloom.
SUPPORT OUR VISION
Want to help us build the future we are planning for?
Scan this QR Code or visit honorearth.org and make a contribution, or even better, become a monthly donor. Your support is critical to our success and to the success of the communities we uplift
Thank you.
Donations can also be made via check. Please make checks payable to Honor The Earth. Mail To:
