From past to present for an Indigenous Future

Indigenous Youth Leadership Training

Indigenous Youth Initiative Training

The Indigenous Youth Initiative (IYI) program calls on Indigenous youth leaders from across Turtle Island to join us in envisioning the future of youth-led change, resistance, & resilience. 

The IYI Training brings together youth leaders from over 20 tribal nations to hone leadership skills, encourage community & engage in social and environmental justice.

  • Earth Guardians’ IYI Training gathers emerging Indigenous leaders from Turtle Island to amplify voices, develop leadership skills, and address pressing global issues. Focused on promoting traditional practices as climate solutions, the program supports youth in building environmental and cultural preservation projects. Participants gain skills in starting or joining Earth Guardian Crews, leading campaigns, and utilizing non-violent direct action and traditional knowledge. Each attendee commits to designing and implementing a joint campaign with support from Earth Guardians staff and mentors, with opportunities to apply for Project Grants post-training.

    • Indigenous youth

    • Ages 18-30

    • Located across Turtle Island

    Not an Indigenous youth? No worries! Check out our other trainings on our events calendar.

  • The fourth annual Indigenous Youth Leadership Initiative unites Native youth leaders from across North America to celebrate, honor, and share their traditional ways of life while developing leadership skills. Participants will address social and environmental justice issues, forming a supportive network to inspire lasting change in areas like traditional ecological knowledge, food sovereignty, and cultural resilience.

  • The 2024 IYI Training has concluded!

    Indigenous Youth of Turtle Island ages 18-30, check back next year for our 2025 IYI training!

  • Please reach out to our IYI Director, Alethea Phillips, to learn more about the IYI program or the IYI training

Special Updates

Special Updates

The 2024 IYI Training’s Impact

The 2024 IYI youth trainees learned skills in storytelling, media, direct action planning, campaign building, leadership, & more!

The training cultivated:

❤️ A joint intertribal Mutual Aid campaign that benefits & connects all the tribes across Turtle Island

🌿 15 grassroots projects to implement as soon as trainees return from the training

🎥 10 original films written, directed, & filmed by the trainees

💛 The formation of an Earth Guardians IYI Crew

Check out the Films created at the 2024 Training

Discover more about Past IYI Trainings

Meet our 2024 Mentors/Trainers

Heather Milton-Lightening has over twenty years of organizing experience, from local issues to international campaigns. Heather was a founding member of Native Youth Movement-that empowered youth politically and socially to make change in their communities; based in Winnipeg, MB in 1995. She helped found Winnipeg’s first Native youth organization called Aboriginal Youth Initiative, Inc., in 1998 through her position as Associate Director. This was the first Indigenous youth organization founded in the Anishinabe clan system and built by Indigenous youth. Heather then went on to found & build a national Native youth network that supported Native youth organizing across the US and Canada with the Indigenous Environmental Network. She was a former member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Youth Advisory and has extensive experience in lobbying internationally through the United Nations and other International arenas on Indigenous Peoples issues. Heather’s work since then has been to build capacity and find resources that help local Indigenous communities. From funding board participation on the Funding Exchange Saguaro Fund and Honor the Earth to helping build the Indigenous People’s Power Project through the Ruckus Society trains on non-violent direct action tools. Heather’s work includes movement building through her position as National Native Organizer for both US Social Forums in Atlanta and Detroit. She is a former organizing member of the Second People of Colour Environmental Justice Leadership Summit. She has participated in many World Social Forums. She’s taught and presented at the Degrowth Summer School in Rhineland, Germany. She was formally the Director & Co-Director of the Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign, working to support frontline impacted Indigenous communities. Heather is currently consulting with many different organizations doing training, facilitating and support work for Indigenous communities while working on finishing a Masters Degree at York University in Toronto, on Indigenous Just Transition.

Teena Pugliese is a filmmaker, performance artist & digital activist currently focused on land stewardship and developing deep community with people, place & planet. Her work spans from documentary features & short-form satires to improvised narrative & scripted films; with a focus on civic engagement through storytelling and film/performance as a pathway towards healing. She is passionate about intergenerational bridge building & supporting connections between youth and elders & loves her work as a youth media trainer & mentor, creating spaces to listen and share stories while exploring how to reclaim control of our own narratives. The late Myron Dewey inspired and mentored her while creating content for Digital Smoke Signals, where she learned how to support stories told through indigenous eyes. She has a BA in theater performance & directing with much "on-the-job training and experience" over the past 25 years and feels spirit full when singing and living truthfully on any stage of life. You can learn more about her work at www.lightmachinearts.com

Anpa’o Locke is a young Afro-Indigenous filmmaker from Standing Rock Nation & who graduated in Film Studies from Mount Holyoke College. Focused on critiquing media representation, she advocates for Black-Native stories, bridging communities & advocating for Indigenous sovereignty & Black liberation through empowered storytelling & community organizing guided by an Indigenous worldview. Awarded for her representation in her films, Anpa’o won the Running Strong Dreamstarter grant in 2023, helping us fund this training to mentor more youth storytellers.

Deep Dive into the IYI Training Strategy & Method

The Indigenous Youth Leadership Initiative incorporates youth leadership and mentorship into the core of this program to personally support the education, project/campaign creation, and project implementation of each of the 20-25 youth trainees. 

The Earth Guardians Indigenous Youth Committee, and our partner Indigenous youth mentors, are responsible for visioning and building out this training, which will focus on three respective tracks of expertise and mentorship:

  1. Traditional Indigenous Knowledge

  2. Non-Violent Direct Action and Campaign Development, and

  3. Reclamation of Story/Media and the Arts.

    Our program teaches Indigenous youth leadership by way of providing a safe space for Indigenous youth to demonstrate leadership in curriculum development, leading training topics (in collaboration with adult mentors), and providing support for the trainees’ project implementation post training. 

This training is based on the LUCA Leadership Model, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, the point in which life expands and diversifies. The LUCA Leadership Model works to shift leadership from being top down to a point from which to expand and grow. Throughout the training, mentors and EG staff will model, and teach, specific leadership skills such as relationship building, strategy development, public narrative, how to build a leadership team, and how to overcome internal organizational obstacles.

This model is  the foundation for the training and the Indigenous Youth leadership Initiative at large.


Three Training Tracks

Traditional Knowledge

During the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EG blog published a TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) digital toolkit. In this track of the training, we will expand upon this toolkit, creating an entire curriculum with an emphasis on food sovereignty and traditional natural medicines. We will explore traditional Indigenous connection to land and the different ways Indigenous youth can further engage with herbal medicine and foods as a way to cure, heal, and feed themselves and their communities. This track will also focus on how Indigenous youth who live in cities can connect with the spaces and land around them while being aware and respectful of the original land keepers. Additionally this track will include an emphasis on traditional prayer, ceremony, and daily journaling. We will be creating a safe space, as we cultivate community, allowing for healing of the mind, body, and spirit. 

Non-Violent Direct Action and Campaign Development

This Direct Action training will go beyond the basics,  providing support for youth in building out individual campaigns and actions that take innovative approaches to Indigenous environmental issues. Senior Indigenous experts and mentors of Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) will teach youth attendees from their many years of experience in the American Indian Movement, The KXL movement, Line 3, NO DAPL and more. This track will include NVDA strategic planning, safety, knowing your rights, as well as campaign goal development, and execution strategies. 

Reclamation of Story/Multimedia and the Arts

In this track, youth will be given a holistic perspective on how to use multimedia and personal narrative to impact and strengthen activist movements. Youth leaders will be guided in preparing their own personal narrative, in relation to the Indigenous environmental movement, to share with audiences to generate impact, educate others, and steer change with their stories. Additionally trainees will learn techniques on how to build their own platform/audiences on social media and how to implement effective digital activism through various mediums (e.g: filmmaking, photography,  audio journalism, creative writing, graphic design, art), utilizing creative skills to generate impact through the arts. 

Goals

Participants will leave the event with:

  • A renewed sense of self, hope, cultural pride, confidence and purpose 

  • An individual grassroots action plan/campaign to implement in their own communities involving at least 500 additional Indigenous youth (10-20 youth per participant)

  • Engagement in Earth Guardians resources

  • EG’s continued support, as well as the training Mentors’ support, in the development and implementation of the trainees’ campaigns, projects, and leadership platforms

  • Increased leadership skills and sovereignty skills to take back into their communities and inspire other youth: NVDA, Story telling, Media, Community Organizing, Traditional Knowledge

  • A strong connection to nature, other Native youth leaders, and at least five other non-profit networks (representing thousands of Indigenous people)

  • Healing/processing/time in nature for sharing of culture: prayer, ceremony, and food as well as both hard and soft skills and tools for physical and mental wellbeing

  • An invitation to apply for a EG Indigenous Youth Project Grant, to financially support local projects and campaigns

Year Round Support

  • Crew support

  • Virtual monthly group meetings

  • Micro-grant application process and fund distribution for individual and community projects via the EG Project Grant program

  • One-on-one mentoring from training facilitators, youth mentors, and EG staff members

  • Access to year-round virtual courses

  • Campaign, public speaking, and paid work opportunities through EG

We won’t wait, it’s our future, we decide.

You C.A.N. choose action now!