Jennifer Smith: Founding Co-Executive Director
Jennifer is a Pima native (Tohono O'odham & Akimel O'odham). and a founding member of First Nations Knowledge Keepers Coalition. Her tribal ancestral roots are in Arizona, however she is a California native and works closely with California tribes.
Her family suffered the Indian boarding schools during the U.S Government Indian Assimilation mandate in order to "rid the United States of the Indian problem". Indian boarding schools were founded to eliminate traditional American Indian ways of life and replace them with mainstream American culture.
At boarding schools, Indian children were separated from their families and cultural ways for long periods, and in many instances, permanently. The children were forced to cut their hair and give up their traditional clothing. They had to give up their meaningful Native names and take English ones. They were not only taught to speak English but were punished for speaking their own languages. Their own traditional religious practices were forcibly replaced with Christianity. They were taught that their cultures were inferior. Some teachers ridiculed and made fun of the students’ traditions. They suffered forced labor and multiple forms of severe abuse.
These lessons humiliated the students and taught them to be ashamed of being American Indian. The boarding schools had a profoundly negative effect on the self-esteem of Indian students and on the wellbeing of Native languages and cultures, and have created cultural trauma that has spanned generations throughout Indian Country nationwide.
Jennifer knows all too well of her tribal knowledge that was lost and forbidden. Through her work with First Nations Knowledge Keepers Coalition, Jennifer's goal is to help Native communities through resources and funding to retrofit community infrastructure, address tribal elder poverty & homelessness, tribal land sovereignty, cultural burns to improve & protect the land, the return and implementation of Native American languages in schools as a language choice, the sharing of tribal traditional knowledge for a multi-Nation collaboration & voice, seed collective of Native plants, working with Watershed projects, and the building of sustainable native gardens; both for sustenance & traditional Native American homeopathic medicine including; the use of sacred plants, teas, and healing rituals.
As a Wildland Firefighter, Jennifer is able to participate in cultural burns as well as state and local county controlled burns. Her work in cultural and prescribed burns plays a crucial role in wildfire prevention, land restoration, and protecting fire-prone communities.
📞 (805) 871-1880 o
📞 (818) 422-0716 c
