Photo: by Felipe Contreras.
About Us
Nia Tero is the world’s leading funder advancing Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship
Indigenous Peoples' guardianship has protected our planet for millennia.
Climate change and other environmental crises make Indigenous knowledge and practices more important than ever.
Funding for Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship is an essential pathway to maintain shared prosperity within planetary boundaries.
Nia Tero is one of the largest and most trusted financial and technical partners of Indigenous Peoples across the globe. We are the world's leading funder advancing Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship.
OUR VISION is that Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship is enabled everywhere possible on Earth as part of a just and vibrant future.
OUR MISSION is to directly support Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship and elevate the role and influence of Indigenous Peoples as essential to ensuring planetary health and habitability.
Capacity sharing
Nia Tero works directly with Indigenous Peoples and our funders. This is capacity sharing – a three-part partnership to reverse the decline of the natural world.
What does this mean?
Capacity sharing recognizes what everyone brings to the table: our funders, Indigenous Peoples and our team. Together, we can reach goals that would be impossible for any one party alone.
Why is this important?
With the support of our funders, Nia Tero offers direct resources to Indigenous Peoples and provides robust organizational strengthening.
OUR IMPACT
$125M+
GRANTS TO GUARDIANS
Since our inception, we have provided more than $125 million in grants to Indigenous guardians and their trusted allies.
100%
PRIORITY BIODIVERSITY AREAS
100% of our partnership settings overlap with Key Biodiversity Areas or other recognized measures of global biodiversity significance.
90%
SEE GUARDIANSHIP STRENGTHENING
Indigenous Peoples' guardianship is strong or strengthening in 90% of our partners' territories, despite growing threats.
Nia Tero’s support helps protect 130 million hectares of lands and waters, sequestering 24.4 gigatons of carbon – the equivalent of four times the U.S.’s annual carbon emissions.
More About Us
Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship is the best-proven, time-tested solution for a healthy planet.
We use the term “guardianship” to describe the ways in which Indigenous Peoples care for their ancestral lands and waters.
Indigenous Peoples' guardianship is rooted in the kinship between humanity and the rest of the natural world. It is no coincidence that many of the world's healthiest, most vital ecosystems are in the hands of Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenous Peoples' guardianship is essential for the very survival of humanity and much of the natural world.
While there are many important approaches to slow or reverse environmental crisis, none are as tested, proven, and rooted in place-based wisdom as Indigenous Peoples' guardianship.
Indigenous Peoples sustain at least 40% of Earth’s remaining intact ecosystems, an essential foundation of a livable planet.
Nia Tero provides direct funding to Indigenous Peoples' organizations, networks, and trusted allies worldwide.
Our flexible, multi-year grants offer funds in ways that respect Indigenous partners’ knowledge systems and cultures. We also offer significant technical assistance at the request of our Indigenous partners.
About 92% of grants have been awarded directly to Indigenous organizations, their fiscal sponsors, or allies selected by the Indigenous partners that manage funds. In 2026, we reached a key milestone in our giving with more than $125 million distributed for the advancement of Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship since our inception in 2017.
While we’re headquartered in Seattle in the U.S., our team spans South America, the Pacific Islands, Asia, Africa, and North America. We speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and a wide range of Indigenous languages.
Our Board of Directors is similarly diverse in expertise and background with Indigenous representation from the Cherokee, Māori, Miskita, Kanaka Ōiwi, Kankanaey Igorot, Lakota, Waorani, and Wayana Peoples. The Board is accountable for providing counsel, insight, oversight, and direction on our strategy.
Our global Advisory Council, comprised of Indigenous leaders and allies from around the world, provides additional guidance and wisdom to our executives and Board.
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 spurred from the 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 has always been deeply grounded in Indigenous wisdom, practices, worldviews, and protocols. Across all our work, we honor and uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Nia Tero means “Our Earth” in Esperanto, a language created in the late 1800s to promote peace and harmony. Esperanto is a second language to all, first to none, allowing people who speak different native languages to communicate while retaining their own language and cultural identity. This concept of unity while upholding identity embodies the heart of Nia Tero.