|
|
Canku Ota |
|
|
(Many Paths) |
||
|
An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America |
||
|
October 19, 2002 - Issue 72 |
||
|
|
||
|
Ford Foundation Chooses Tohono O'odham Community Activist and a Co-director of Tribal Group for "Changing World" Award |
||
|
by David Tiebel Tucson
Citizen
|
||
|
credits: Terrol
Dew Johnson and Tristan Reader - Photo by Cary Herz/Getty Images
|
|
Terrol Dew Johnson and Tristan Reader, founders
and co-directors of Tohono O'odham Community Action in Sells, are sharing
$130,000 in awards over the next two years. The money will help them to them continue
their work, said Kristen Simone, with the New York City based Ford Foundation,
a private, non-profit, grant making organization. "It's exciting, it's an honor,"
Johnson said in a telephone interview from New York City. He and Reader
were in New York today to receive their awards at a dinner ceremony.
"Definitely it's going to give us the
opportunity to do more great things on the reservation," including
"paying the bills," Johnson said. Reader, originally from Tempe, said of the
award, "It's really a recognition of the hundreds of people in
the O'odham community" who have worked in the six-year-old Community
Action program. The Community Action program relies mainly
on foundation grants and private donations, Johnson said. "Leadership for a changing world awardees
demonstrate the kinds of leadership that are particularly effective
in addressing the complex social realities of contemporary communities,"
Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation said in an announcement.
Johnson and Reader's program was chosen to
receive the award from among 1,400 nominations nationwide. Johnson, a Tohono O'odham, is a nationally recognized Native American basketweaver and leading member of the Tohono O'odham Basketweavers Organization. Reader is not Native American, but has worked for seven years on the Tohono O'odham Nation with Johnson. Under Johnson and Reader, Tohono O'odham Community
Action has established a traditional tribal food program. The Tohono
O'odham have one of the highest rates of adult-onset diabetes in the
world, attributed partly to a modern diet. It also has established the Basketweavers Organization, a traditional arts and culture program and a youth, elder outreach program, the Ford Foundation said in an award profile. Community Action's annual Celebration of Basketweaving
draws more than 300 Native American weavers from 17 tribes in 10 states,
as well as native people from Mexico, Australia and Canada, Ford Foundation
said. Community Action also created a marketing cooperative to ensure fair compensation for weavers, the foundation said.
|
SELLS,
AZ - A Tohono O'odham community activist and the co-director of a tribal
community action group are among those receiving 20 Ford Foundation
Leadership for a Changing World awards. 
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
| Canku Ota is a free Newsletter celebrating Native America, its traditions and accomplishments . We do not provide subscriber or visitor names to anyone. Some articles presented in Canku Ota may contain copyright material. We have received appropriate permissions for republishing any articles. Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monetary gain to those who have expressed an interest. This is in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107. | ||
|
Canku Ota is a copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 of Vicki Lockard and Paul Barry. |
||
 |
|
|
|
The "Canku Ota - A Newsletter Celebrating Native America" web site and its design is the |
||
|
Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 of Paul C. Barry. |
||
|
All Rights Reserved. |
||
