ICA’s Funding Principles: The Three Sisters Approach

Ruth Breech, Rainforest Action Network

Indigenous Climate Action is a critical organization in the work for climate justice. ICA is grounded in relation with Indigenous leaders, land and values. It is these values that are interwoven into climate policy, analysis, campaigns, gatherings, trainings and actions. ICA meets an important need of bringing together Indigenous communities on the frontlines of fossil fuels and climate change to affect change locally and influence internationally. ICA leadership and network hold experience, tradition and innovation together in a graceful and powerful balance to meet the dire needs of climate impacts.

ICA's vision is immense and necessary, one that we should all support.

Bill McKibben, 350.org

Indigenous communities are now squarely at the forefront of the climate justice movement, in North America and indeed around the world. ICA is one of the megaphones that amplifies the voices we most need to hear!

Suzanne Benally, Swift Foundation

ICA serves an active and important role in uplifting the voices of indigenous people in the climate justice movement, nationally and internationally, and especially in involving Indigenous youth. Their work centers around experiential learning and self-determination and is an example of how to make indigenous voices heard and included in climate solutions at all levels. We appreciate ICA's authenticity, commitment, depth of thought and accuracy in naming core issues directly. They stand up and speak truth to power while maintaining clear practices and protocols of accountability to their communities. ICA leads by lived experience where other major environmental NGO’s have failed us. We are grateful to be in partnership with ICA, an organization guided by the strength, passion and wisdom of people who know that climate change is the product of colonialism and that ingenuity and knowledge comes from the resilience of communities who continue to endure and carve new tomorrows.

Zeph Flynn, individual donor

I am a descendant of an Eastern Canadian Anglo family who has been growing wealth over several generations on stolen land. My paternal grandfather was an executive in Shawinigan Water and Power, which took over First Nations territories and later got taken over by Hydro Quebec; my mom ran a small lumber mill in Montreal. I've lived most of my adult life in the United States, benefiting from white supremacy and participating in liberation movements that taught me about the need for reparations and repair. As a result, now that I have inherited from my family, I am moving funds to BIPOC-led organizations in the US and I also wanted to pay reparations to Indigenous-led organizing in Eastern Canada. I am supporting Indigenous Climate Action because you are well-respected as the only Indigenous-led national climate organization in Canada, and because you were a key player in stopping the $20 billion Teck Frontier tar sands mine in Alberta. Your work is crucial, and I am honored to be able to support it.