About Us
Who We Are
The Indigenous Cultural Foundation is dedicated to healing communities through the power of cultural connection and ancestral wisdom.
Our Mission
The mission of Indigenous Cultural Foundation is to support individual and community healing by integrating ancestral teachings, cultural practices, and wellness-based approaches that promote identity, resilience, and intergenerational healing.
Our Vision
Our vision is a future where Indigenous and culturally rooted communities thrive through holistic wellness, strong cultural identity, and intergenerational healing rooted in the teachings of our ancestors.
Our vision extends beyond preserving culture, it is about restoring relationships: with ourselves, our families, our communities, our ancestors, and the land. We envision Indigenous children growing up with a strong sense of identity, families reconnecting with traditional teachings, and communities where ceremony, language, cultural practices, and collective responsibility are woven into everyday life. Through culturally grounded counseling, restorative practices, community leadership, and ancestral teachings, we are planting seeds of healing today that will strengthen the next seven generations and contribute to a future where Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and the Americas continue to thrive together.
Our Values
What Guides Us
Sacred Spaces for Healing
Our Prayer is to have access to land for ceremonial purpose. The Indigenous Cultural Foundation, we believe ceremony is sacred and should always be carried with humility, respect, accountability, and care. Our vision is to create a dedicated ceremonial space where children, youth, families, and community members can participate knowing they are physically, emotionally, mentally, culturally, and spiritually safe. Safety is not simply about the environment, it is about the relationships that surround the ceremony. It is built through clear ethical standards, respect for personal boundaries, accountability, informed participation, and a commitment to honoring the dignity of every person who enters the space. We recognize that some individuals have experienced harm or exploitation in spaces presented as ceremonial or spiritual. Our commitment is to help restore trust by fostering a community rooted in integrity, transparency, cultural responsibility, and the guidance of respected Elders and traditional knowledge keepers. We believe that ceremony should never be used to control or exploit others; it should strengthen identity, restore balance, deepen relationships, and support the wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities. By creating sacred spaces where people feel seen, respected, and protected, we hope to ensure that ceremony remains what it has always been: a pathway to healing, cultural continuity, and connection with our ancestors, one another, and the generations yet to come.
Community-Defined Healing
At the Indigenous Cultural Foundation, we believe healing does not happen in isolation, it happens in relationship. For Indigenous peoples, wellness has always been rooted in family, community, culture, ceremony, and our connection to the land. Healing is strengthened when individuals feel seen, supported, and connected to a community that honors their identity, lived experiences, and ancestral traditions. Our approach recognizes that every community carries its own history, strengths, and ways of healing. Rather than imposing one model or definition of wellness, we create spaces where community members, Elders, knowledge keepers, families, and youth help shape what healing looks like. Through listening, shared responsibility, and mutual respect, we honor the wisdom that already exists within our communities. Community-centered healing is reflected in every aspect of our work, from individual counseling and restorative circles to cultural education, ceremonies, community gatherings, youth mentorship, and intergenerational learning. These spaces encourage connection, accountability, belonging, and collective care while strengthening cultural identity and resilience. We also recognize that healing is inseparable from safety. Every person deserves to participate in cultural and ceremonial spaces where they feel physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually safe. We are committed to fostering environments grounded in ethical leadership, cultural humility, transparency, and respect, where trust can be restored and communities can heal without fear of exploitation or harm. By bringing people together to learn, remember, support one another, and carry forward ancestral teachings, we strengthen not only individuals but entire families and communities. In doing so, we help cultivate a future where healing is shared, culture is sustained, and every generation has the opportunity to thrive.
Honoring Our Ancestors, Guiding Future Generations
Our work is rooted in the understanding that we are part of a much larger story. We carry the resilience, wisdom, sacrifices, and teachings of the seven generations who came before us, and we have a responsibility to those who will come in the seven generations after us. Every choice we make today has the potential to strengthen or weaken the path for future generations. By reconnecting with our ancestral teachings, languages, ceremonies, cultural practices, and relationship to the land, we honor those who protected these ways despite generations of displacement, colonization, and cultural erasure. Their perseverance allows us to remember who we are today. In the same way, we are called to become good ancestors. We strive to create safe spaces where children, youth, families, and community members can heal, learn, lead, and carry forward these teachings with integrity and responsibility. Our goal is not only to preserve culture, but to ensure it continues to evolve through each generation with respect, compassion, and accountability. Guided by this seven-generation teaching, the Indigenous Cultural Foundation is committed to planting seeds today that will continue to nourish our communities long into the future. We believe that when we honor those who came before us and act with future generations in mind, we create a legacy of healing, belonging, cultural continuity, and collective responsibility.
Honoring Our History
The Indigenous Cultural Foundation envisions creating a two-story cultural center that serves as a place of learning, gathering, and belonging for Indigenous peoples and the broader community. More than a building, it will be a living space where history, culture, art, education, and community come together. The center will provide space for conferences, workshops, community gatherings, cultural celebrations, art exhibitions, youth programming, and educational events that strengthen Indigenous identity and promote cross-cultural understanding. It will also include a living history gallery that shares the Indigenous story of Los Angeles, and from the original caretakers of these lands, the Tongva people and other surrounding Tribes. This space will honor the leaders, Elders, scholars, artists, culture bearers, and community members whose work has helped preserve Indigenous knowledge, revitalize ceremony and language, protect sacred places, and strengthen Indigenous identity across generations. By preserving these stories, we hope future generations will understand not only where they come from, but also the responsibility they carry to continue protecting culture, community, and the land. We envision this cultural center as a place where history is not confined behind glass, but lived through storytelling, ceremony, art, dialogue, and community. It will be a space where Indigenous voices lead the telling of our own histories, ensuring that the stories of our ancestors, our communities, and our resilience continue to guide future generations.
Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor
At the Indigenous Cultural Foundation, we are inspired by the teaching of the Eagle and the Condor, a vision of renewed balance, relationship, and mutual respect among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. While this teaching is often understood as a call for humanity to reunite the wisdom of the mind and the wisdom of the heart, we believe its message is especially meaningful for Indigenous families living in urban communities. For many urban Indigenous peoples, generations of displacement, relocation, and colonization have created distance from our ancestral lands, languages, ceremonies, and traditional ways of life. We see the Eagle and the Condor not only as a prophecy of unity across the Americas, but as an invitation to restore those relationships within our own neighborhoods, families, and communities. By bringing ceremony, cultural teachings, restorative practices, counseling, and land-based experiences into urban spaces, we seek to create opportunities for Indigenous peoples to reconnect with who they are, where they come from, and the responsibilities they carry to future generations. We believe the spirit of the Eagle and the Condor can live wherever Indigenous people gather with intention, including in the cities where many of our families now call home. Through these efforts, we honor our ancestors while helping ensure that our children and grandchildren inherit strong cultural identities, healthy communities, and a lasting connection to the lands and teachings that continue to guide us.
Land-Based Healing
For many Indigenous families living in urban communities, generations of relocation, displacement, and colonization have created distance from the lands, cultural practices, and traditional ways of life that once sustained our ancestors. Land-based healing provides opportunities to reconnect with those relationships through time in nature, ceremony, cultural teachings, stewardship, and reflection. At the Indigenous Cultural Foundation, we believe that reconnecting with the land helps restore identity, belonging, resilience, and collective wellbeing, while strengthening our responsibility to care for the Earth and for one another for the next seven generations.