INDIGENOUS EXCHANGE AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

PLHI facilitates and provides financial backing for opportunities that connect Indigenous Peoples regionally and globally through transformative, cross-cultural, and mentorship experiences vital to the development of Indigenous leaders.

Past exchange partners include the Sherpa people of the Nepal Himalaya and the Garhwali people of the Indian Himalaya. International forum experiences include participation in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) and its working groups. In 2018, the ARMP and PLHI team participated in an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the 17th Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII). The PFII is the United Nation's central coordinating body for all matters relating to the concerns and rights of the world's 370 million Indigenous people. The team addressed Indigenous peoples’ collective rights to lands, territories, and natural resources.

PLHI seeks to expand upon this program through the creation of an international Indigenous equine knowledge exchange program (inspired by PLHI’s People of the Horse traditional camps) whereby Tribal youth learn from intact horse cultures around the world and develop their skills and knowledge as trainers, backcountry packers and cultural guides, veterinarians, clinicians, and other equine-related professions. Under the Indigenous Research program, Indigenous equine knowledge will be respectfully curated and protected for the purposes of better understanding the horse-human healing connection and as a means to recover aspects of culture that were lost to colonization and globalization.