As we head into another summer of hotter days, drought, stress on waterways and habitat, and the now-familiar arrival of wildfire smoke, the First Peoples Climate Fund puts city and philanthropic money behind Native communities already doing the work of responding to these pressures, many of them closest to the impacts and with long-held knowledge of how to care for this region.

Created through Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment in partnership with Seattle Foundation, the fund will support a wide range of work, including habitat restoration, building decarbonization, Native food and land stewardship, youth climate programs, workforce development, and energy upgrades tied to urban Native housing and services.

“The people who best know how to live with these lands are the folks who have lived in these lands with traditional knowledge passed down over thousands and thousands of years,” says Matt Remle, Lakota and a member of Seattle’s Green New Deal Oversight Board.

Hannah Ljunggren, Matt Remle, Romajean Thomas, and moderator Lindsay Goes Behind, chief impact officer at Seattle Foundation, at the First Peoples Climate Fund event in Seattle last week.

Photo courtesy of City of Seattle / Seattle Foundation

“While Indigenous communities may be on the front lines of impact,” says Seattle Foundation President and CEO Alesha Washington. “There’s also a reality that Indigenous communities have long been the authors of the solutions.”

The Suquamish Tribe will use its funding on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tribal government buildings. Hannah Ljunggren, climate resiliency program manager for the tribe, says the grant will support building assessments, a new building decarbonization analyst, and workforce development tied to solar and other energy projects. “Being able to train tribal members on installing and maintaining solar panels creates opportunities not just for this particular individual who we’ll be hiring, but future generations as well,” she says.

For Feed Seven Generations, the grant will help keep Native climate work moving after the loss of other funding support. The organization’s work centers culturally rooted food and land stewardship. “They’re meeting us in the moment and mitigating the direct impact of funding loss,” says Romajean Thomas, a Muckleshoot tribal member and director of education and community engagement at the organization. “And so to be able to continue on with our 2026 climate work, even in the face of that funding loss, has been tremendously helpful.”

She says the work goes further than one grant cycle. “It has been taught to us that we take the knowledge from prior generations and bring it forward. We make sure it doesn’t just stay with us, but that it moves through the next seven generations and beyond.”

The other grantees are Snoqualmie Tribe, Cattail Rising, yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective, Seattle Indian Services Commission, and Chief Seattle Club. Their work includes restoration planning along rivers and floodplains, land-based climate programs for Native youth, a Rainier Beach resilience hub and Indigenous Arts Campus, support for Native workers and entrepreneurs, and energy-efficient upgrades to Monterey Lofts alongside services for urban Native community members experiencing homelessness.