The North Carolina American Indian Heritage Commission (NCAIHC) along with the North Carolina Museum of History has landed a financial boost courtesy of grants from the Catawba Nation Foundation. While the Museum of History garners a $7,000 grant to promote its 30th American Indian Heritage Celebration, injecting funding that ensures Native artists and tribal leaders can present their heritage with pride, the NCAIHC's $10,000 grant aims to enlarge an oral history project, safeguarding the stories and cultures at risk of being lost to time, as reported by the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
In a bid to preserve the narratives of the elders, the NCAIHC and the State Archives of North Carolina has previously initiated an oral history project, now gaining further momentum with the new grant—these shared experiences mesh together forming a tapestry of lifeways and memories, something that the commission has been working on through interviews with American Indian individuals hailing from all eight state-recognized tribes and urban organizations. NCAIHC Director Kerry Bird underscored the importance of this initiative, saying, “Oral histories allow us to capture the life experiences of American Indians to share with people a hundred years from now,” Bird told the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The efforts to amplify American Indian voices and cultural heritage are in alignment with the goals of the Catawba Nation Foundation, itself funded largely through gaming pursuits, setting out to bolster not just Native American communities but also environmental, educational, and cultural endeavors across North Carolina. The Grants aimed at bolstering cultural representation and awareness in the Tar Heel state with these grants being just one of the many conduits for achieving such an end—with community impact at the forefront, as clarified by the Foundation's executive director Kristine Urrutia.
Additionally, the new grant will enable the oral historian to reach even more Indigenous populations around North Carolina, going beyond the initial seed funding from the National Archives received in 2024, which posed as a foundation for the hiring of an oral historian, a traveling chronicler collecting and digitizing the precious accounts from the elders. For those interested or knowing someone with stories to share, they are encouraged to get in touch with Quinn Godwin at the contact details provided by the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Catawba Nation Foundation operates under a board comprising community and tribal leaders, tasked with steering the foundation's initiatives and grant-making, ensuring their alignment with the core values and strategic directives laid out. Anyone interested in the broader scope of the foundation's work or the endeavors of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources can glean further information from their respective official online portals.
