About Nia Tero

Our VISION & Mission

The governance systems and cultural wisdom sustained by Indigenous Peoples have significant impact on the health of the ecosystems where they live. We have learned that funding Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship of territories is one of most effective pathways for protecting the Earth’s most important ecosystems. We believe Nia Tero can be most impactful by growing, shaping, and strengthening the field of practice advancing Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship.

• Our vision is that Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship is enabled everywhere possible on Earth as part of a just and vibrant future.
• Our mission is to directly support Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship and elevate the role and influence of Indigenous Peoples as essential to ensuring planetary health and habitability.

Who We Are

We are the dialogue, the bridge, the point of tension; we are the space between western knowledge and values, and Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and values. We are neither one nor the other. 

We are Nia Tero. 

We assist Indigenous Peoples in attaining guardianship of territory, and in doing so we aspire to help people around the world to remember themselves. 

In 2017, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders came together to found Nia Tero. Our goal: to work in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples to safeguard their ancestral territories and ways of being, collaborating on essential global efforts toward a vibrant and habitable future Earth.

Today, we are a global bridging organization that brings Indigenous Peoples and allies together to advance what we call Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship. Our partnerships with Indigenous Peoples are explicitly structured to honor self-determination, respect time-honed knowledge systems and ways of being, and build trust while upholding the sacred value of reciprocity.

Our team is currently based across South America, the Pacific Islands, Asia, Africa, and North America, with a large contingent at our Seattle headquarters. We speak many languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and a wide range of Indigenous languages.

Our Board of Directors is similarly diverse in background and expertise – a majority of whom are Indigenous. The Board is accountable for providing counsel, insight, oversight, and direction on our strategy. Our global Advisory Council, comprised of Indigenous leaders from around the world, provides additional guidance and wisdom to our executives and Board.

Our work is complementary to many longstanding Indigenous Peoples’ movements, which have existed for hundreds of years. Whenever possible, we join forces with and amplify these movements. By design, we are but one player in an expanding constellation of efforts to advance Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship.

Our Work

Indigenous Peoples sustain at least 40% of Earth’s remaining intact ecosystems, an essential foundation of a livable planet. Nonetheless, Indigenous Peoples and their territories are under existential threat. Nia Tero exists to support the self-determined needs of Indigenous Peoples and to play an active role in accelerating true allyship globally. Nia Tero provides direct funding via grants and contracts to Indigenous Peoples' organizations, networks, and trusted allies worldwide. 

• 92% of grants have been awarded directly to Indigenous organizations, their fiscal sponsors, or allies selected by the Indigenous partners that manage funds.
• Since 2017, we have distributed $85 million in grants, including multi-year grants.
• Nia Tero partners with 271 distinct Indigenous Peoples around the world, with special focus in three key regions: Amazonia, North America, and the Pacific Islands.
• Our support helps protect 128 million hectares of lands and waters, sequestering 24.4 gigatons of carbon.
• In just seven years, Nia Tero has become one of the world’s largest and most trusted financial and technical partners for Indigenous Peoples. Learn more about our grantmaking here.

Our Founding Story

In 2017, Conservation International Founder Peter Seligmann and a small group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders decided to launch a new, highly diverse organization devoted to supporting Indigenous Peoples in their efforts to protect their ways of life and their territories. The impetus to start a new organization came from the founders’ realization that humanity’s fate is directly dependent upon the ability of national governments, and the public, to support Indigenous territorial rights and embrace Indigenous Peoples’ understanding of the reciprocal relationship between all beings and the Earth. Our organization was founded with an inherently different approach than our peer environmental and social justice-driven NGOs – one that centers Indigenous Peoples and their worldview from inception – not speaking for but rather in partnership with Indigenous Peoples in support of the work already being done through Indigenous leadership to safeguard the Earth.

Our work is deeply grounded in Indigenous wisdom, practices, worldviews, and protocols. Our North Star is the foundational principle of reciprocity, which is the interdependency and relationship between the Earth, humanity, and all other species. Across all of our work, we honor and uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.