Contribute
There are many ways you can contribute to Southeast Indigenous Peoples' Center! You can share time, information, or goods. You can also pray that creation, including Indigenous Peoples and the ecosystems we participate in, is respected. Please email info@firstsoutherners.org if you would like to help with environmental or cultural research, monitoring, reporting, or advocacy.
SIPC is founded and supported by independent Indigenous Peoples carrying on the traditions of Indigenous Peoples whose governments and ancestors protected and participated in southeast ecosystems for thousands of years. Because our Peoples are among the first Peoples of the Americas to survive contact with Europeans, the member Peoples of SIPC are not memers of the legal class the US describes as "federally recognized US Indian Tribes" who suffer the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) that was created to facilitate US westward expansion and removal of southeast Indigenous Peoples. Thus, as independent Indigenous Peoples remaining in the Southeast, our Peoples do not receive the protection from violence, hunger, and dislocation that members of this US BIA legal class do. Although the US recognized southeast Indigenous Peoples through legal and/or military action as the "Indian Tribes" described in the US Constitution and today recognizes our Peoples as Indigenous Peoples, our Peoples do not have the access to food, housing, health care, and education that members of the US BIA legal class do. When the US advertises support of Indigenous Peoples it refers to BIA directed funding.
SIPC receives most of its support from independent Indigenous Peoples and receives no funding from the US though we are protecting resources from which the US greatly benefits. Independent Indigenous Peoples of the Southeast continue our ancestors' traditions of implementing policies that protect the ecosystems that are part of us. We can promote responsible environmental policies more effectively with your help.
Your contributions will help SIPC:
Strengthen ecosystems with southeast Turtle Island.
Empower Indigenous Peoples to mitigate the causes of climate change while promoting adaptation to climate change.
Protect the cultural heritage of southeast Indigenous Peoples and perpetuate millennial cultural practices that promote respect for life.
Promote the physical and cultural survival of Indigenous Peoples who cultivated and were acculturated by the Southeast for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the Americas.