Initiatives

Indigenous guardians already know a way to live in harmony with nature, and have lived this way for tens of thousands of years. It's time to listen, learn, and uplift Indigenous Peoples leading the way in the fight against climate change. Throughout COP26 in Glasgow between October 31 - November 12, 2021, follow our social accounts to join us in solidarity and support of Indigenous guardians.

Our Infrastructure & Innovation work is focused on amplifying and accelerating Indigenous technologies including transportation, communications, and monitoring systems that build autonomy and sovereignty.

Our Infrastructure & Innovation strategy focuses on two thematic priorities identified by our external regional advisory councils, and our program team partners:

1. Transportation and Energy
2. Technology

Starting with initial R&D investments in 2020, our efforts continue to mature and integrate closely with our regional strategies, as well as our crosscutting work in Program Related Investments (PRIs) and the Technodigenous initiative.

Since 2012, a team of engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs, together with Achuar community members and leaders, have been working together on this shared dream.

Our work takes three complimentary and interconnected approaches: infrastructure, people, planning. The initiative is based on the belief that the best way to preserve the rainforest is to empower its Indigenous custodians. By transforming energy use in vulnerable territories, we are activating resilient technological and socio-economic alternatives to degradation and exploitation.

To foster community with other creatives while increasing visibility, hiring opportunities, and collaborations in global media industries. We prioritize Indigenous Peoples and actively seek to build coalition with other artists in the global majority, including Black, Latinx, Asian, and people of color, as well as people who are undocumented, femme, trans, and nonbinary people, LGBTQIA+ people, and people with disabilities. We look forward to building a new way of working in a changing world while showcasing and creating community for Indigenous screen storytellers.

In 2020, Nia Tero’s Program Related Investment (PRI) workstream expanded significantly. Through a partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, we finalized terms for an investment in Raven Indigenous Capital Partners’ first fund.

Raven provides seed funds and early-stage equity to purpose-driven Indigenous enterprises across Canada that demonstrate commercial viability, scalability, and measurable community benefit streams. As an Indigenous-led and owned intermediary, Raven is also working diligently to decolonize the investment process for Indigenous entrepreneurs, ensuring cultural relevance and safety at each stage of the process. Following the equity investment with MacArthur, we provided direct grant support to Raven to help build and pilot an impact indicator for guardianship alongside their existing impact framework.

We anticipate future impact and grant investments with Indigenous-led and trusted non-Indigenous intermediaries and enterprises along three main pathways, including: our priority regions, innovation pilots that test novel ways to support Indigenous enterprises and collectives, and capacity-building support to decolonize impact investment processes and strengthen Indigenous-led intermediaries.

Reciprocity Project seeks to embrace the value of reciprocity through Indigenous perspectives through storytelling, film, podcasts, and other creative mediums. In doing so, we aim to create a paradigm shift that reframes our relationships to the Earth, other living beings, and one another.

As guardians of their ancestral territories, they ensure the continuity of thriving cultures and the protection of the ecosystems we all depend on. Their relation to nature is guided by their time-tested knowledges and technologies. Yet, such knowledge is rarely incorporated in the development of technologies and there seldom exists opportunities for co-creating solutions following their guidance.

Technodigenous aims to change that by being a space to share knowledge, experiences, ideas, and inspiration while building a community of practitioners, technologists, and thinkers who can work together co-creating Indigenous-led solutions to strengthen Indigenous Peoples rights and self-determination.

Technodigenous will facilitate an ongoing discussion, frank and constructive, between practitioners, technologist and thinkers about the differences in perspectives of technological development, the ethical challenges of interaction, and possible sets of guiding principles for the co-design, adaptation, and deployment of technological solutions in Indigenous territories. Technodigenous is designed around Indigenous Peoples’ experiences and views of certain existing technological solutions, as a way of grounding the conversation in concrete Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives. Additionally, Technodigenous will nurture a growing number of thematic conversations and workshops, with brainstorming sessions specifically aimed at useful practical outcomes.

During Climate Week NYC in 2022, Indigenous leaders took the stage during the TED Salon: THRIVE event on September 22, hosting a first-ever partnership between TED and Nia Tero to highlight Indigenous guardianship globally. At the event, Indigenous leaders from different parts of the world shared their stories, experiences, and ancestral wisdom about how humanity can take care of the planet now and for generations to come.

These TED Talks are a powerful platform to amplify the leadership of Indigenous Peoples as we collectively face the climate crisis, and give us all an opportunity to uplift Indigenous guardianship of Earth and all beings.

Learn more about each of the speakers, and watch their TED Talks.

In partnership with Amplifier design lab, Nia Tero launched the Thriving Peoples. Thriving Places. campaign on International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples 2021 as a timely reflection and embodiment of the focus of the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), when leadership from across the globe will meet, with the purpose of collectively tackling climate change.

The Indigenous women activists, artists, and scholars at the heart of this campaign exemplify the ideals of guardianship, kinship, reciprocity, and wisdom. Their voices, work, and leadership benefit not only their own peoples and communities, but all of us who share this planet — which is why now, more than ever, we must celebrate them, listen to them, and most importantly, follow their lead.