The Cultural Conservancy (TCC)

The Cultural Conservancy (TCC) is a Native-led non-profit organisation based in San Francisco, CA founded in 1985. It is deeply rooted in Turtle Island (North America) with strong connections to Hawai’i, and has expanded across the American continent and Moana (greater Pacific).

TCC works with Native/Indigenous peoples locally and globally on community-based projects that are shaped by community requests and guided by the Native Advisory Council of Traditional Knowledge Holders, land-care practitioners, and community leaders. TCC commits to Indigenous youth and elders and promotes intergenerational knowledge exchange.

Its mission is to protect and revitalise Indigenous cultures through the direct application of traditional knowledge and practices on ancestral lands. It facilitates community-led transformation for those struggling with food access, land displacement, and physical, spiritual, and cultural health.

From language revitalization and traditional carving projects to Indigenous agricultural sciences and traditional land tending, critical to TCC’s work is the acknowledgement of the sacred relationship Native peoples have to lands and waters and the importance of this relationship to physical, mental, and community health.

TCC focuses on:

  • Eco-cultural revitalization
  • Biocultural diversity
  • Renewing and restoring the health of traditional knowledge
  • Foodways
  • Landscapes
  • Practices of Indigenous cultures that were substantially damaged by colonialism

Its flagship Native Foodways Program and new land project Heron Shadow work to provide safe, culturally-rooted spaces, access to traditional knowledge systems, Indigenous agricultural sciences, and resources for growing healthy culturally appropriate foods including planting, harvesting, processing, distributing, cooking and seed keeping.

  • 2023
  • Established Projects
Photo: The Cultural Conservancy (TCC)

Project information