The work to build strong communities takes many forms.

Sometimes it is an art show, sometimes it is a youth leadership program, and always there is value in running at our core. Over the years Native Roots Network has been part of many powerful movements and strives to be a conduit and catalyst for change.

The challenges are well known. There is an ongoing struggle to keep traditional cultures and pathways alive. Health and wellness efforts lag behind rising health disparities. Native Roots Network helps the community accomplish solutionary strategies to these and other issues.

The Dream: Acornomics
əL KULUS The Granary - A Community Resilience Center and Solidarity Economy Hub

We are weaving our learnings about New Economies into our work to collaborate, educate and invigorate possibility to build strong networks that serve our local and regional community.

Acornomics is our Indigenous knowledge informed and valued centered holistic economic development strategy to build, foster, and support a healthy, resilient, empowered community and landscape. 

At the metaphorical heart of the “Acornomics” model is the Acorn, a traditional staple of many Native California Indigenous Peoples, is a readily available nutritious food that comes from several different types of oaks, each with their own character and flavor. Only through human care and tending of the landscape were large stands of healthy oaks sustained. Development, destruction, disease and catastrophic fire-prone lands choked by brush reduce the productivity and resilience of the oaks. 

Like our human community, the acorns and oaks are the literal and metaphorical sources of sustenance who are in need of care and tending. Through workforce development and place making, we would reinstate our traditional role as land caretakers and cultivators in ways that are not exploitive of the Earth or our labor.

At Əl Kulus, NRN is planning and designing a permanent facility to house a traditional ecological knowledge based land restoration team, a small scale manufacturing and digital fabrication lab, and act as a community resilience center, an energy efficient community space in blue sky days, and a self sufficient emergency support hub, with micro grid power and water catchment, to support community members in times of disaster and disturbance.

indigenous Sovereignty

Self-determination: Through the formation and development of an Indigenous-led Community Land Trust and cooperative business models, we will help to re-member our community, healing from past harms, practicing collective-decision making, creating processes and providing opportunity for community to guide the direction and conditions of their labor. Our intention is to build power to exercise agency and executive control to better determine our future, our work, and ecologically-sound development in our community on our terms.

Sustainability: By reinstating our ancestral values into contemporary spaces we can shift our goals towards supporting a regenerative land base where we can center the value and re-humanization of the people, and reestablish the balanced connection of these two interdependent entities, to ensure sustainability and abundance. Native Roots Network will take the foundational steps in advancing the Acornomic framework and the əL KULUS space to plan and build community capacity.

Natives getting active

Since March 2015, Natives Getting Active has been meeting every Monday night to support walking and running as pathways to health - without fail. The group meets at the Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA to support one another in being active. Group members also participate in local fun runs, races and ceremonial runs here in our community and elsewhere.

Native youth Programs

Acorn Academy
In 2017, working in conjunction with Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency, Native Roots Network and Local Indians for Education conducted a pilot youth leadership program to develop the leadership and organizing abilities of youth in Shasta County.

Runners of the Dawn
In 2015, Native youth were trained in video documentation while reconnecting to ancient roots of running and health.

Native Youth Cultural Exchange
Since 2004, the Native Youth Cultural Exchange connected young men and communities of Hopi in Arizona, Hawaiians in Hawai'i and tribes in Northern California on a month-long cross-cultural immersion journey.

Native Arts Cultural Collective

Our Story: Native Art Exhibitions & Cultural festivals
Since 2004, Our Story has offered Native-led venues for Native artists to talk about their ways and themselves - in their own words, images and music.