National Park Service Awards Over $603,000 to Indian Country and Native Hawaiian Organizations

The National Park Service announced $603,149 in grants on Monday for 10 projects across Indian Country in protection of  America’s Native cultures.

“These grants help the National Park Service work with American Indian Tribes and Alaska Native organizations to preserve their cultural heritage and reconnect people with their traditions of the past that help inform their future,” National Park Service Director Chuck Sams (Umatilla) said.

A sample of the type of projects funded by the grant include:

• The stabilization of the Noow Hit Tribal House for the Chikoot Indian Association in Haines, Alaska. This traditional gathering place for the Tlingit people is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
• The Wyiot Tribe’s workshops to train Tribal citizens in California to become Tribal Monitors, so they can engage in site preservation and public education in a meaningful way.
• The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation’s plan to conduct Oral Histories of approximately 40 Tribal elders in Kansas to preserve the historical account of the Nation and its people, their cultural heritage and traditional practices.

The National Park Service see these projects as important to preserve tribal heritage for future generations. Other projects funded by these grants will locate and identify cultural resources, preserve historic properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places, support comprehensive preservation planning, preserve oral history and cultural traditions, provide training for building a historic preservation program, and support cultural and historic preservation interpretation and education.

Congress appropriated funding for the Tribal Heritage Grant Program in 2022 through the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF). The HPF uses revenue from federal oil leases on the Outer Continental Shelf to assist with a broad range of preservation projects, mitigating the loss of a nonrenewable resource with the preservation of other irreplaceable resources, without expending tax dollars.

Awards

Alaska, Anchorage

Shuyak Island Archaeological Survey
Koniag, Inc.

$74,997

Alaska, Chickaloon

Talkeetna Survey
Chickaloon Native Village

$47,959

Alaska, Haines

Stabilization of the Noow Hit Tribal House
Chilkoot Indian Association

$74,889

Arizona, Scottsdale

Survey of Significant Places: An Integrated Tribal Cultural Landscape Approach
Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community

$74,230

California, Loleta

Wiyot Ancestral Territory Cultural Resource Monitor Training

Wiyot Tribe

$75,000

California, Santa Ysabel

Survey of Ancestral Places
Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians

$49,998

Kansas, Mayetta

Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Oral History Project
Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation

$74,941

Michigan, Mount Pleasant

Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School Pre-preservation Study
Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan

$46,000

Oklahoma, Durant

Pushmataha Hall and Classroom Building at Wheelock Academy Feasibility Studies
Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma 

$65,108

Oklahoma, Quapaw

Quapaw Nation Oral History Project
Quapaw Nation

$20,027

Total $603,149

Applications for at least $500,000 in 2023 funding will be available in winter 2023. For more information about the grants and the Tribal Heritage Grant program, please visit the Tribal Heritage grants website.

For more information about NPS historic preservation programs and grants, please visit the State, Tribal and Local Plans and Grants division website.