The Native Cultures Fund
Celebrating 25 years of community work.
Supporting California Indian culture bearers, artists, lifeways, and knowledge transmission.
Founded by California Indian leaders and Native-led, the Native Cultures Fund began in 1999 but has practiced community grantmaking and program development at Humboldt Area Foundation since 2002.
NCF grantmaking committees continue to be made up of Native California culture bearers, language revivalists, artists, and educators — former grantees make the grants. The Native Cultures Fund, or NCF, has made over $2.9 million in grants to 389 community-based projects in more than 100 California Native communities.
Beginning in 2016, the Native Cultures Fund oversees the Jack Montoya Memorial Scholarship to support Native students in California, who are actively strengthening their cultures, to attend a four-year university or graduate studies program. Other NCF scholarships include the ‘Aa-wok Georgiana Trull Memorial Scholarship and the Adrian Joseph Romo Memorial Scholarship.
In addition to grantmaking and scholarships, the Native Cultures Fund supports programs like the Live Your Language Alliance conference for knowledge sharing among Indigenous language teachers and learners. Among other things, NCF curated the River As Home exhibition, advocated for Yurok language to be adopted for language credits into Eureka public schools, and co-founded the Humboldt’s California Indian Big Time with Native students at Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly HSU). We continue to advocate, connect, and support Native peoples in the movements that arise from within California Indigenous communities.
Program Evaluation
In 2018, we completed a program evaluation in partnership with Live Oak Consulting and supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Humboldt Area Foundation and the California Endowment. This evaluation process provided time to speak with past and present grantees, staff, and members of the communities we serve to better understand and determine the effectiveness of grants over the organization’s life and to equip NCF with knowledge and direction for a strategic plan and a clear path forward.