Areas of Focus

• For the 2025 call for proposals, they are particularly interested in projects focused on the following topics and their intersections:
  • climate change - (e.g. reforestation, adaptation of crops, flood prevention)
  • food sovereignty (e.g seed banks, Indigenous traditional food systems, fishing and hunting rights)
  • Indigenous economies (e.g. production, distribution and circulation of products, trade, community enterprises, arts and crafts when they are a strong part of the local economy).
  • Indigenous governance based on ancestral systems (e.g. inclusion of women and youth on Indigenous governments, strengthening assemblies or other forms of decision making)
  • Indigenous knowledge systems - (e.g. transfer of knowledge from knowledge keepers to youth and children).
  • Indigenous spiritualities - (e.g. practice of rituals for agriculture, cycles of the moon, the rain, knowledge transfer of Indigenous cosmovisions to new generations or the community).
• However, applicants should feel free to propose projects on any issue or solution that is important to their community.

Funding Information

• Grant amounts can be up to a maximum of $8,000 (eight thousand) US dollars. The fund is intended as a boost that facilitates initial project activities aimed at sustainability and self-sufficiency.

What do they not fund?

• Projects that do not originate from Indigenous communities or organizations, or that are not led by Indigenous
• Peoples
• Political campaigns
• Missionary or proselytizing projects
• Conference registration fees
• Individual work or projects
• Academic research (institutionalized, western university research)
• Projects modeled on government programs

Geographic Priority

• As part of their grantmaking process, Cultural Survival deeply values building long-term relationships with the communities and organizations that receive their funds—their partners. For this reason, they strive to personally visit most of the funded projects. For this call, to facilitate these visits, they prefer proposals from the following countries:
  • Botswana
  • Namibia
  • South Africa

Requirements for Applying

• The project is Indigenous-led with collective decision making or with community engagement at all stages of the planning and implementation of the project
• Eligible applicants are:
  • Indigenous communities,
  • Indigenous governments,
  • Grassroots Indigenous organizations
  • Nonprofit organizations
• Must have a bank account able to receive international transfers
• Legal registration of the collective is not required

For more information, visit Cultural Survival.

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/2025-keepers-earth-fund-call-project-concepts-botswana-namibia-and-south-africa