We are a Native-led nonprofit organization

Founded in 1985, we are based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with our headquarters on unceded Ohlone land and our land base in the sovereign territories of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo peoples

We work with Indigenous communities throughout Turtle Island and Abya Yala (the Americas) and Moananuiākea (the Pacific)

 
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OUR MISSION
is to protect and restore Indigenous cultures, empowering them in the direct application of traditional knowledge and practices on their ancestral lands

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Guiding Principles

  • Native Peoples have a sacred relationship to the land through their genealogy, original instructions, and cultural lifeways.

  • Native Peoples and communities have a right to self-determination as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

  • Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing and being are foundational and play an essential role in protecting environmental integrity and biological diversity.

  • TCC is committed to intertribal, intergenerational transmission of knowledge and to intercultural alliance-building.

 

Core Values

  • Respect for the gift of life, Indigenous rights and culture, and environmental health.

  • Honor Indigenous peoples and communities through respectful collaborations and reciprocal partnerships.

  • Support initiatives that allow native cultures, people and land to thrive (as defined by them).

  • Recognize and Revitalize tribally-specific Traditional Knowledge and Practices, as they outline values of indigenous well-being through sacred obligations and responsibilities.

For example, a few cosmovisions and original instructions from Indigenous communities we partner with:

Mino-bimadaziwin – a cultural value and mandate from the Anishinaabe of Turtle Island to live a good, healthy life committed to continuous re-birth of the gifts of Creation.

Mālama ʻāina – a Hawaiian cultural value that outlines human’s kuleana (responsibility) to take care of that which nourishes you, to take care of the land and elements that give us life.

Kaitiakitanga – from the Maori of Aotearoa, a worldview that recognizes human’s sacred role as guardians and protectors of the environment.

Sumac Kawsay – from the Quechua peoples of the Andes, a concept for “good living,” in balance with the living Earth and our human community. Its Spanish equivalent is “buen vivir.”

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Image credits:
Photos by Mateo Hinojosa and Melissa K. Nelson
Poetic Goals design by Timoteo Montoya
Rainbow accent designs by Diane Rigoli