MAJOR FEDERAL GRANT AWARDED TO LOCAL INDIGENOUS ORGANIZATION TO DISRUPT EDUCATIONAL CRISIS AMONG AMERICAN INDIAN CHILDREN AND YOUTH


10/14/2020
For more information: Contact Lucia Preciado at 323-363-1339
NDGNSLA.ORG
Aiupworldschool.org

TZICATL CDC is proud to announce that a five-year multimillion dollar competitive grant has been awarded to it by the U.S. Department of Education to implement “American Indian Resurgence (AIR) Initiative: Uplifting Native Voice and Native Choice in Los Angeles". Tzicatl was awarded $6,022,968 through by the US Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE): Office of Indian Education (OIE): Indian Education Discretionary Grant Program: Demonstration Grants for Indian Children and Youth Program (Demonstration Program). According to Tzicatl CDC board chair, Marcos Aguilar (Masewalli Mexicano), “The AIR Initiative is a strategy to advance Indigenous Community-based Resilience, Regeneration & Resurgence.” Dr. Shannon Speed (Chickasaw) of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center remarked, “It is hard to overestimate the significance of this five-year award to the AIR Initiative, which will undoubtedly impact the lives of thousands of Indigenous students across Los Angeles.“ Tzicatl board member Nick Rocha (Gabrielino Shoshone) also stated, “We are a people who have had everything torn from us, but it will be our children and our children's children that will be the needle and thread that will help sew it all back together again.”
Tzicatl Community Development Corporation (Tzicatl) was founded in Los Angeles in 2002. Our mission is to advance the rights of Indigenous Peoples, through the reparation of community and advocacy for healthy ecosystems to cultivate Indigenous education and culture in relation with ancestral lands. Tzicatl Community Development Corporation is an Indian organization as recognized by the US Department of Education. A legally established, independent 501(c)(3) organization in the state of California, our purpose includes the advocacy for and promotion of Indigenous education. Our bylaws reflect this purpose and our governing Board is majority Indigenous including tribally enrolled members of state and federally recognized tribal nations. Tzicatl cultivates and supports Indigenous education as a key partner and sister organization to Semillas Sociedad Civil (Semillas), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit Indigenous educational organization, which operates the Anahuacalmecac International University Preparatory of North America (Anahuacalmecac) charter school. 
In partnership with the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Missions Indians Tribal Government, community-based organizations such as Semillas, and other local Indigenous community-based organizations, the American Indian Resurgence Initiative will leverage our twenty years of experience with providing Indigenous education in Los Angeles to impact 1000 students across tribal identities, districts, and schools over the course of five years. Tzicatl will act as a backbone organization, administrating, convening, and resourcing sustained outreach and educational service coordination to the region’s extraordinarily diverse Native families and communities. Our goal is to uplift tribal self-determination in the Los Angeles area among Native American middle and high school students and their families with access to high-quality and culturally relevant educational programs and services that will cultivate a living Indigenous education ecosystem, support their Native identities within our unique geographical, historical, and cultural context, and create pathways to high school achievement and college enrollment.

Background & Partners

Tzicatl and Semillas educators have worked to disrupt educational disadvantages faced by Indigenous students and families in Los Angeles since 2002. In November 2019 Anahuacalmecac World School was honored to host the National Urban Indian Family Coalition’s (NUIFC) Resurgence Gathering I: Our National Community of Practice. Indigenous educators from six metropolitan centers across the continent gathered as a follow up to the production of the 2017 NUIFC report Resurgence: Restructuring Urban American Indian Education. This report – the first of its kind – highlights the challenges facing urban Native American youth in public schools and showcases seven alternative public education programs that are having a positive impact in addressing these challenges. It tracks the history of the U.S. public education system’s relationship with Native American communities and the on-going disparities that exist within academic achievement data for urban American Indian students, commonly referred to as “the achievement gap.” The report acknowledges that educators and administrators have worked tirelessly with policy officials and the philanthropic community to reform the system to close this achievement gap, but it still persists for all students of color and is especially bleak for urban American Indian students.

Also in 2019, Semillas co-founded the Indigenous Education Now Coalition, to bring light to the failure on the part of the Los Angeles Unified School District to address the needs and rights of Indigenous students and families. The Indigenous Education Now Coalition is comprised of the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Missions Indians, California Native Vote Project, Anahuacalmecac World School, UCLA American Indian Studies Center, Pukuu Cultural Community Services, United American Indian Involvement Clubhouse, and American Indian Community Council, as well as students, parents and community members from throughout the community. In April, 2020, as part of the Indigenous Education Now Coalition (IEN Coalition), On February 1, 2019, the IEN Coalition filed a formal complaint with the United States Department of Education against the LAUSD centered around the District’s failure to comply with federal law requiring tribal consultation and on-going discrimination. 

Through the AIR Initiative, Tzicatl and Semillas will work to advance from the community building and network mobilization experiences already established to address what we identify as the “Resurgence Gap”. The Resurgence Gap is the chasm between the life potential of American Indian youth and the reality of their conditions caused by the systemic barriers and historic failures of public education. In order to overcome this gap, not only is systemic change imperative at the institutional level but more importantly, Indigenous youth and families need to be able to re-establish an entire ecosystem rich in community, culture and creativity where they can flourish. 
The AIR Initiative will begin with a year to establish baseline data on student needs and plan the agreements and details of the Initiative with community partners and allies. The AIR Initiative: Native Youth to College through Community Pathways aims to increase access to and self-determination of quality, culturally relevant, evidence-based and evidence-informed education and enrichment services for Native American students and parents. The Initiative is centered around privileging the lived experiences and aspirations of Native families in our communities and aims to create opportunities for students to choose to participate in services that are most appropriate to them and to their families. The available services included in this project were selected based on an assessment of student and parent need within the local historical and cultural context of Los Angeles and included community-level social and educational indicators as well as direct input from students and families. Its focus is rooted in the unique Indigenous historical and cultural context of our region and responsive to the urgent contemporary needs of Los Angeles area Native communities today. 
“AIR” is more than just an acronym. It is represented here as the unifying element among the four root elements that compose the terrestrial and alluvial ecosystems in Native science: Air, Fire, Water, and Land. Accordingly, services offered to families through the AIR project center around three themes: 1) Water: Nation to Nation Community Building and Educational Choice; 2) Fire: Redefining College Preparation and Access for Indigenous Communities; and 3) Land: Transformational Learning Through Heritage and Healing. Our approach embraces a collaborative and flexible project design that allows us to provide access to high quality and culturally relevant education choices to an urban Native student population that is extremely diverse in terms of tribal affiliations, racial identities, economic status, and language and widely dispersed throughout Los Angeles County schools where they are frequently unrecognized, undercounted, and underserved.

To learn more visit: NDGNSLA.ORG
Anahuacalmecac students and staff members in partnership with Native Like Water, a Native American Indian Intertribal Youth and Adult Educational Cultural organization. 2019.