NEWS FROM THE FORD FOUNDATION
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Tuesday, June 1, 1993 Contact: Lloyd Garrison
212-573-4925
FORD FOUNDATION GRANTS $2.15 MILLION TO SUPPORT NATIVE AMERICAN PROJECTS
New, York, NY, June 1 - In one of organized philanthropy's largest efforts
to address Native American issues, the Ford Foundation today announced
grants totaling more than $2 million to the National Museum of the American
Indian of the Smithsonian Institution and the First Nations Development
Institute. Together, the two grants represent more than 20 percent of all
foundation funding for Native American interests this year.
"These grants focus on two important issues -- deepening public
understanding of the cultures of Native American people and promoting
Indian economic self-sufficiency," says Alison Bernstein, director of the
Ford FOundation's Education and CUlture program.
Bernstein noted that less than one-tenth of one percent of foundation
resources go to Native American programs and more than 70 percent of
foundations provide no support at all. Yet the poverty rate for American
Indian families is more than twice as high as the rate for the general
population and unemployment on some reservations is 50 percent or more.
To increase the resources available for economic development on
reservations, FIrst Nations will use a $1 million Ford Foundation grant
to launch the Funders COllaborative for American Indian Development. The
collaborative plans to breing together some 20 foundations to raise $12
million for development grants to tribal governments, tribal colleges,
and other reservation-based organizations.
"This is the first time that resources of this magnitude are
being invested to enable Native people to create their own economic
development strategies in keeping with their culture, customs, and
community," says President Rebecca Adamson of First Nations. A grant
of $1.15 million is helping to establish the National Museum of the
American Indian (NMAI), scheduled to open in 2001. FOundation funds
will be used to link the museum's programs to tribal communities
throughout the Western hemisphere through telecommunications and
special services. Among the institutions served will be tribal
museums, cultural centers, libraries, schools, and tribally controlled
colleges. NMAI, which will occupy the last available site on the
National Mall in Washington, D.C., is dedicated to the collection,
preservation, study, and exhibition of the historic and living cultures
of North, Central, and SOuth American Indians.
"This grant moves us closer to making sure that the descendants
of those who created the objects in our collection can draw upon the museum's
resources to build their present-day communities and to plan their future,"
says NMAI Director Richard West.