Indigenous Peoples Network selected for Grassroots Fund Cohort

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The Grassroots Fund has selected the Indigenous Peoples Network (IPN) to be part of the 2023-2024 Food System Resilience Cohort. Initiatives will focus on the intersection of equity, food justice, and community development and will support a movement of food system leaders across the region through networking, shared learning, and coalition building.

The New England Grassroots Environment Fund, Inc, (Grassroots Fund) was founded in 1996 as a funder’s collaborative, with a mission to energize and nurture long-term civic engagement in local initiatives that create and maintain healthy, just, safe and environmentally sustainable communities throughout the six New England states. With an emphasis on those who have often been marginalized, Grassroots Fund empowers individuals, groups and organizations working across a broad range of environmental and social justice issues.

“The Grassroots Fund has been a steady supporter of the Indigenous People in this region,” says Chief Sequan Pijaki, Chairman of the Pocasset Pokanoket Tribe and co-founder of IPN. “We are grateful for this opportunity and look forward to building a more equitable food system together.”

Musquant Nompashim Netas, leader of the Ninigret Nehantick Nahaganset Clan and IPN’s Indigenous Roots Forever Food Access Program, understands that this work goes beyond food security. “Food brings people together. Food strengthens communities. It’s a different kind of medicine.”

Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust Receives Food and Farm Communications Fund Core Grant for Second Consecutive Year

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The Food and Farm Communications Fund has awarded a Core Grant to the Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust (PPLT) to support strategic communications development. One of twenty organizations chosen throughout the country, the grant allows PPLT to increase content creation and social media presence in support of its Indigenous food access program and land repatriation projects in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Esperanza Pallana, Executive Director of the fund said, “We are proud to continue our support of PPLT in 2023. They represent a critical narrative of a movement across the nation to reclaim ancestral land for regenerative agriculture and traditional land-based spiritual practices.”

Since 2012, the Food and Farm Communications Fund has awarded $5 million to grass-roots food and agricultural organizations that emphasize environmentally sustainable, and indigenous practices for use in the battle against climate change. Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust is proud to be among them.

“We are grateful for our partnership with the Food and Farm Communications Fund,” said Chief George Spring Buffalo, Executive Director of the Land Trust. “They have really helped us build our communications capacity. PPLT was formed with the intent of capturing back remnants of the Pocasset Purchase and we now steward historical lands in Tiverton. Our trust also provides an opportunity to unite different tribal communities, clans and Indigenous people back to our traditional ways of growing food and providing access to healthy medicine.”