Origins
Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples (SPI) is a California Indigenous-led, community-rooted organization whose mission is to build the capacity of Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples to protect sacred lands, waters, and cultures.
SPI was founded in 2012 to provide in-person and virtual spaces for Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples to think and strategically plan how best to protect their sacred places and advance the environmental justice priorities of tribal communities.
From the local to the global, we combine grassroots organizing and direct action with law and policy research and advocacy to create paradigm shifts that support environmentally and socially just systems and assure the continuation of Indigenous cultures and peoples.
As one of the very few California Indigenous-led, grassroots, and BIPOC-staffed organizations in California, we represent a unique and necessary voice at the intersection of Indigenous health, sacred place protection, climate justice, and environmental movements.
By embracing Indigenous principles to plan for the seventh generation, SPI supports Indigenous communities with a network of knowledge and strategy-sharing both locally and globally. As an institute, we advance health, environmental, and climate justice priorities as defined/determined directly by the communities we serve.
We work alongside tribal community members to strategically amplify Indigenous perspectives on climate and environmental justice, land stewardship, and watershed planning. We are responsive to calls from our Indigenous relatives around the world to protect sacred lands, waters, and cultures. Respectful and reciprocal relationships are the key to developing successful community-driven programming. We advocate for the inclusion of Indigenous voices in all policy-making spaces, uplifting Indigenous health and climate justice on a larger scale.
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Land Acknowledgement
Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples is located in Los Angeles County, California, within the traditional and unceded ancestral homelands of the Gabrielino/Gabrieleño Tongva Nations. Though their homelands continue to be occupied in violation of their sovereignty, these Native Peoples are still here and operate as Tribal Nations with international relationships. Our work to build the capacity of Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples to protect sacred lands, waters, and cultures extends throughout what is known as California, the United States, as well as internationally as we create paradigm shifts that support environmentally and socially just systems and assure the continuation of Indigenous cultures and peoples.
SPI pays respect to and honors the Gabrielino/Gabrieleño Tongva Nations, the original caretakers of what is now known as Los Angeles County, northern Orange County, southern San Bernardino County, Riverside, Corona, and the four southern Channel Islands. We firmly believe that we should be accountable to and in service of the Native Nations on whose ancestral homelands we live and work. Our staff and advisory Board Members include Gabrielino/Gabrieleño Tongva Nations, Ajachemem, Šmuwič Chumash, Samala Chumash, Cahuilla, Dinė, Hupa, Yoeme, and Chicana/Xicana.