Blog

Small Change Fund has just returned from the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples‘ (IFIP) conference in Tofino, BC. Ruth was invited to  the conference to moderate a panel entitled “Building Indigenous and Environmental Partnerships: Community Voices from Russia and Canada.” The session included a great panel with four amazing women – Gladys Netro, Ekaterina Eveseeva, Ginger Gibson, and Galina Angarova – talking about how their communities are responding to natural resource extraction in the Arctic.

The conference  was inspiring, humbling, energizing, and powerful. There was a world of people there committed to securing the rights of indigenous people, their land, culture, and histories. The stories from Panama, Kenya, Borneo, Siberia, Peru, Greenland, United States, Guatemala, Canada, New Zealand, and other places familiar and unfamiliar were deeply enriching.

Highlights of IFIP included: being welcomed to Tla-o-qui-aht Nation territory by elder Levi Martin on Tin Wis Beach looking out over the pacific ocean; viewing RAVEN‘s movie Blue Gold on the fight to save Fish Lake, a powerful and inspiring smallchangefund(ed) project; listening in as Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake Cree emphasized the challenge of fighting Alberta’s Tar Sands; and learning from Linda Different Cloud about restorative ecology and bringing back traditional plants to her reservation.

What a privilege to have joined the gathering, thank you to IFIP for inviting us to participate.

To learn more about big and small lessons learned at IFIP check out Ruth’s blog post.