About Nia Tero

Our Mission

Nia Tero works in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples who sustain thriving territories and cultures to strengthen guardianship of Earth and all beings.

Who We Are

Nia Tero is a US-based non-profit working in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples and movements worldwide to support their efforts to protect their territories. Nia Tero is not an Indigenous organization – we are made up of Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders who work together with Indigenous Peoples committed to guardianship of their territories. Below are highlights about our leadership and global teams:

• Our Board of Directors is predominantly Indigenous. Meet our Board.
• Our Advisory Council is predominantly Indigenous. Meet our Advisory Council.
• Our Global Team is a diverse, experienced, and passionate community of people who hold Indigenous and non-Indigenous identities. Meet our Team and Global Consultants.

A core strength of Nia Tero is that our Indigenous team members – who come from our priority regions of North America, the Pacific Islands, and Amazonia, and who hold lived experience and knowledge as Indigenous Peoples – manage our grantmaking relationships with our partners.

This Indigenous leadership and partnership model has been a core aspiration of our operations since Nia Tero’s inception. We are incredibly proud of this, and recognize we have further to grow – it is something we understand as key to the success of our mission.

Our Work

Indigenous Peoples sustain at least 40% of Earth’s remaining intact ecosystems, an essential foundation of a livable planet. Nonetheless, Indigenous Peoples and their territories are under existential threat. Nia Tero exists to support the self-determined needs of Indigenous Peoples and to play an active role in accelerating true allyship globally. Nia Tero provides direct funding via grants and contracts to Indigenous Peoples' organizations, networks, and trusted allies worldwide.

• 92% of grants have been awarded directly to Indigenous organizations, their fiscal sponsors, or allies selected by the Indigenous partners that manage funds.
• Since 2017, we have distributed $85 million in grants. We expect to reach $100 million in distributed grants by the end of 2024.
• Nia Tero partners with 271 distinct Indigenous Peoples around the world, with special focus in three key regions: Amazonia, North America, and the Pacific Islands.
• Our support helps protect 128 million hectares of lands and waters, sequestering 24.4 gigatons of carbon.
• In just seven years, Nia Tero has become one of the world’s largest and most trusted financial and technical partners for Indigenous Peoples.
• In 2023 alone, Nia Tero awarded over 170 grants, totaling more than $22 million to these partners or to the ally organizations our partners asked us to support.

Our Founding Story

In 2017, Conservation International Founder Peter Seligmann and a small group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders decided to launch a new, highly diverse organization devoted to supporting Indigenous Peoples in their efforts to protect their ways of life and their territories. The impetus to start a new organization came from the founders’ realization that humanity’s fate is directly dependent upon the ability of national governments, and the public, to support Indigenous territorial rights and embrace Indigenous Peoples’ understanding of the reciprocal relationship between all beings and the Earth. Our organization was founded with an inherently different approach than our peer environmental and social justice-driven NGOs – one that centers Indigenous Peoples and their worldview from inception – not speaking for but rather in partnership with Indigenous Peoples in support of the work already being done through Indigenous leadership to safeguard the Earth.

Our work is deeply grounded in Indigenous wisdom, practices, worldviews, and protocols. Our North Star is the foundational principle of reciprocity, which is the interdependency and relationship between the Earth, humanity, and all other species. Across all of our work, we honor and uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.