Seeds of Wisdom

Protecting Knowledge That Helps Protect Our Future

For thousands of years, Indigenous communities have understood something we're only beginning to fully appreciate:

Our health, our food, our forests, our water, and our communities are deeply connected.

Indigenous knowledge has helped communities care for forests, water, wildlife and healthy landscapes for generations. Preserving that wisdom is also an investment in the environmental solutions our future depends on.

Those lessons have been passed from one generation to the next—not through books, but through stories, observation and lived experience.

Today, many of those voices are at risk of being lost forever.

That's why Wisdom of the Elders records, preserves, and shares the oral histories, ecological knowledge, language, and cultural traditions of Native American Elders before they disappear. Working alongside tribes, educators, and community partners, they're helping ensure this knowledge continues to guide future generations.

But we don't stop at preserving history.

We put that wisdom into action - through seed banks and habitat restoration, through land stewardship and workforce training, through internships that prepare Indigenous youth to become filmmakers and storytellers., through more than two decades of archived interviews that continue to educate communities today.

Every conversation recorded today becomes knowledge available tomorrow.

Every Elder's story helps shape a healthier future.

Today, we’re inviting you to help us build momentum and fill the gaps in our funding year. Help us keep our programs moving forward:

Into the ground: a community seed bank, seed exchanges, free seed sharing, and habitat restoration.

Into careers: land restoration training, farm-based job training, and a multimedia internship that prepares young Indigenous storytellers for paid film work.

Into memory: an archive of more than twenty years of footage, ongoing Elder interviews, and a storytellers association that keeps the tradition alive out loud.

Most of our grant funding does not reach our account until February, sometimes March. The work does not pause to wait, and neither do winter utility bills. What you help us raise now keeps staff paid and programs running.

Help us preserve Indigenous wisdom, restore our relationship with the land, and prepare future generations to carry these stories—and solutions—forward.

Knowledge grows when it's shared.