Meet Our 2026 Indigenous Community Media Fund Grant Partners

At Cultural Survival, we recognize the importance of Indigenous media as platforms through which Indigenous Peoples share their stories, struggles, knowledge, and visions for the future. This media is essential for amplifying their voices, preserving their memory, and ensuring the continuity of their Traditional Knowledge.

Since 2017, Cultural Survival’s Indigenous Community Media Fund has supported Indigenous Peoples’ efforts to foster intercultural dialogue, promote intergenerational knowledge exchange, and strengthen community collaboration. It has also helped Indigenous Peoples exercise their right to free and informed decision-making to achieve good living, harmonious coexistence, respect for diversity, and to define and sustain their own narratives.

From its inception, the Indigenous Community Media Fund has provided a total of 455 grants supporting community media projects in 42 countries across 4 continents, for a total of $3,086,561.  In 2026, the Fund provided a total of $257,000 in funding to 36 Indigenous communication projects in 23 countries across the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Projects will be implemented in Argentina, Bolivia, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, the United States, and Zimbabwe.

The 36 funded projects will focus on strengthening media infrastructure, acquiring equipment, building capacity, and producing content on topics such as climate change, territorial defense, natural disaster response, and the strengthening of Indigenous cultures, languages, and communication.

We are pleased to present the 36 funded projects from the 2026 cycle, described here with their consent:

“Taiñ zugu ka ayekan (Our Words and Sounds)” is a project that seeks to promote the knowledge of the Mapuche people through the creation of a website that will serve as a platform and archive of community-produced audio content. It draws specifically from the trawn (gatherings) of women, youth, and children in dialogue with Elders, who are recognized as bearers of kimün (ancestral knowledge). The community will produce and distribute these materials, creating an audio archive accessible for educational, community, and research purposes, as well as for dissemination on social media.

The project will be a collaboration between the Arteadentro Association and the Mapuce Kimün collective, who will support one another with logistics and outreach through weekly thematic columns published on digital media platforms in Mapuche communities. Content includes songs, music, reflections on buen vivir, and audiovisual productions that highlight the Mapuzungun language.

Qadhuoqté FM (“from the very beginning”) is a Qom community radio station located in Rosario, Santa Fe, established to revitalize the Qom worldview and the Qomlaqtaq language. It is the city’s first Indigenous radio station and serves as a forum for concerns of the Qom community and a link to increasing the visibility of their cultural and social life and worldview. The station carries out a variety of youth-focused activities.

The project “L,lamaqa ya ahuiaq (Voices of the Forest)” aims to revitalize the radio station following a period of hiatus. New technical and radio operations training sessions will be held, as well as programming content workshops that will offer young people in particular a space to gather and grow in the various roles associated with radio. The goal is to ensure that their worldview and customs are given a voice, in their language, to address the complexity of keeping the Qom worldview alive in a city.

Radio Werken Kurruf (“Messenger of the Wind”), Radio La Voz del Budi, and the radio program “Lafken Tañi Dugun (Voice of the Sea)” are located in the rural Mapuche territory of Aylla Rewe Budi. These media outlets seek to strengthen local culture, revitalize the Mapuzungun language, and give a voice to the communities. They also play a key role in disseminating information about emergencies, health, transportation, government services, schools, municipality, cultural activities, and territorial conflicts. They are a space for gathering, dialogue, and intercultural exchange that strengthen community bonds and connect the community with the outside world.

The project “Community Radio Network for the Defense of itrofill mogen (Biodiversity) in the Territory of Aylla Rewe Budi” seeks to strengthen reflection and practice based on Mapuche kimün (ancestral knowledge) regarding the recovery, conservation, and defense of biodiversity while promoting the appreciation of the knowledge of Elders and encouraging its transmission to younger generations. Collaborative networks will share knowledge on forest restoration, the recovery of medicinal plants for the machi (spiritual authority), preservation of native seeds, use of dye plants, and the protection of spaces fundamental to Mapuche spiritual life such as menoko (wetlands), trayenko (waterways), and mawiza (forests).

The Narciso López Parliament of Indigenous Peoples, Nations, and Communities, based in Abra Pampa, Jujuy, works to strengthen identity and to preserve, reclaim, and defend the worldviews, traditions, spirituality, and rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the Puna region of Jujuy. It also promotes the revitalization of their languages and raises awareness of the issues they face related to territory, water, memory, and history. The Parliament has a communications department dedicated to promoting news and activities and concerning the ancestral Nations of what is now Argentina.

The project “Yachay Wasi (House of Knowledge) Indigenous Communication Incubator” aims to strengthen the field of communication, with a particular focus on young people, to create tools for raising awareness about the issues communities face in their territories from extractive development in Jujuy. Workshops will be held on the right to communication with identity; Indigenous rights, youth rights, women’s rights, rights of sexual and gender minorities, and the right to a healthy environment; public speaking and interviewing; writing and editing; photography and sound; and audiovisual production using mobile phones.

Anti-Patriarchal Community Feminism aims to combat systems of patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, racism, extractivism, machismo, and misogynism by drawing on ancestral memory. The goal is to build a society free from subjugation and violence and in harmony with nature, following in the footsteps of the ancestral peoples who have walked this path before us.

The radio program “Warmi Jallp´a, Warmi Marka (Women and Territory)” airs every Saturday in Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish from Cercado province in the department of Cochabamba. It seeks to create a space for political education and debate rooted in anti-patriarchal community feminism, where memory and languages can be reclaimed and national and regional issues are discussed as an act of decolonization and to break down borders. The program analyzes the patriarchal system, structural violence, and extractivism by amplifying the voices of women from Abya Yala, confronting racism and repression and promoting autonomy and living well without violence. It is strengthened through political education workshops to develop discourse and technology workshops.

Wayna Tambo is a cultural center located in El Alto that organizes cultural events, radio programs, educational initiatives, community outreach activities, and publications. It operates an intercultural community radio station, also called Wayna Tambo, which collaborates with a broader network of radio stations. The center’s mission is to contribute to the revitalization of community life from the perspectives of buen vivir and plurinationality as a form of equitable organization. It involves the active participation of urban, working class communities, and seeks to strengthen the connections between urban and rural areas in decolonizing, decommodifying, and dismantling patriarchal and anthropocentric perspectives through cultural, artistic, educational, communication, and economic strategies and actions.

The project “Buenos convivires (To Nurture, Care for, and Invigorate Life)” aims to highlight the knowledge, resistance, and ancestral existence of Indigenous Peoples to sustain buen vivir and the care of water and biodiversity in the communities of the Titicaca and Río Chico basins and surrounding areas in Chuquisaca. It also seeks to confront the threat of dispossession, extractivism, and expansion in contemporary Bolivia. Micro-programs, interviews, reports, and other coverage will be produced to strengthen the Indigenous communities’ sense of belonging and highlight the importance of their knowledge for a more dignified, balanced, and sustainable life for all people.

Since 2015, Indigenous Climate Action has existed as an organization led by and for Indigenous Peoples working on issues related to climate change. Indigenous Climate Action empowers Indigenous Peoples to engage in decision-making spaces and demand the necessary systemic changes. They do this through five avenues: meetings, resources and training, restorative justice, support for sovereignty and self-determination, and amplifying voices. By developing tools, resources, and opportunities created with, by, and for Indigenous Peoples, they empower voices, sovereignty, and the stewardship of lands and waters for future generations.

“Indigenous Climate Action Pod” Season 5 is part of an effort to amplify Indigenous voices through a podcast highlighting the stories, knowledge systems, lived experiences, and leadership of Indigenous Peoples as essential elements for climate action and solutions. The podcast will seek to address the lack of representation of Indigenous issues in the climate justice discourse and support those on the front lines in establishing the connection between extractive colonial systems and climate change. It will also focus on capacity building with and for community members.

Tâpwêwin Media is a nonprofit organization that supports the creation of trustworthy, trauma-informed media grounded in Indigenous values, protocols, and relational care. Tâpwêwin Media views media as a space for healing, recovery, and collective change. They amplify voices, mentor future storytellers, and model a new way of doing business based on sovereignty, solidarity, and truth. The organization was founded and run entirely by Indigenous women to serve as a home for storytelling, leadership, and innovation in its many forms. Its mission is to publish Indigenous-led journalism, support emerging storytellers, revitalize Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge, and offer mentorship and mutual support to grow an Indigenous-centered media ecosystem.