A project at First Nations Development Institute aims to support, reflect on, and share learning about Native American community intellectuals. It has partnered with four Native-run non-profits to raise awareness among community intellectuals, support them, and discuss how best to document and share their knowledge.
First Nations Development Institute (First Nations), with generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, has been engaged in an unprecedented project to support, reflect on and share learning about Native American community intellectuals in partnership with four Native-run nonprofit organizations: The Hopi Foundation, Salish Kootenai College, Leadership Institute at Santa Fe Indian School, and The Piegan Institute at Cuts Wood School. Each of these organizations are anchors in their communities and are centers of excellence in supporting local community intellectuals and their work in elevating the Native voice in influential circles.
Through this project, each partner organization has worked diligently over the last year on projects that engage community-identified intellectualism representing diverse areas of expertise and ages to discuss concepts of intellectualism specific to their Native culture, its foundation, and historical and contemporary applications.
The outcome of the project is to raise awareness among Native community intellectuals and how it may manifest uniquely in different communities, identification of qualities of Native community intellectuals, best practices for communities and organizations to nurture and support these individuals, how community intellectuals’ contributions may best be documented and shared, and how the knowledge of Native community intellectuals may further or be furthered by Western education standards.
