Mission: Serving Our Spirits supports indigenous communities and wisdom keepers’ efforts to preserve and carry out the ceremonies and rituals that feed the spirits and deepen personal and cultural connection to the spirits. In doing so, SOS strives to help preserve and revitalize animistic traditions and beliefs, shamanic and related medicine practices, traditional indigenous language, lore and knowledge, and to help protect, maintain and invigorate the numinous sacred places where spirits dwell.

The SOS Fund supports:

1. Ceremonies, rituals, pilgrimages and spiritual gatherings that need to be done at this crucial turning point in human history.
2. Traditional practices and projects that protect the spirits and the numinous homes of the spirits: sacred natural sites and cultural landscapes where spirits dwell, and which are especially important to the spirits.
3. Projects that aid, protect and preserve those who work with the spirits, namely: shamans, medicine people, sacred site guardians, elders, wisdom keepers, and others.
4. Projects that preserve and pass on the ceremonies, rituals, practices and knowledge of shamans, medicine people, elders, wisdom keepers and native communities—including traditional knowledge, stories, and indigenous languages.

Please note: SOS does not, as a rule, support technology purchases, general public festivals and events, land rights cases, purchase or acquisition of land, or direct legal or law enforcement efforts.

Grant Application Process:

Step 1:  Email or mail SOS a one- or two-page Letter of Inquiry (LOI) that includes a brief description of your proposed project, a timeline, and the amount of your grant request.

Step 2:  SOS will reply and let know if we have any questions, and whether you are invited to submit a Project Proposal. If you are invited to submit a proposal, we will send you an SOS Proposal Template to use as a guideline in writing your proposal.

Step 3:  SOS will make a reasonable effort to give you a response to the submitted proposal within 30 days of receipt.

Project proposals are accepted and reviewed on an ongoing basis.

Grant awards generally range from $5,000 to $15,000 (US).

SOS Fund focuses on initiatives in the following areas: 

• Ceremony, ritual, pilgrimage and related gatherings.
• Meetings and gatherings to restore balance in the land, within traditional communities, and between communities and nature.
• Protection of sacred natural sites and cultural landscapes.
• Intergenerational transmission of traditional spiritual knowledge from elders to youth and the wider community, in service to future generations.
• Preservation of spiritual practices and culture, including ecological knowledge and medicine practices, native language, food sovereignty and traditional lifeways.
• Experiential education and outreach.
• Environmental restoration and conservation projects.
• Promotion of transboundary indigenous and conservation collaboration.
• Responses to long-term or immediate threats from industrial development and resource extraction.
• Communication of worldview, cultural values, philosophy of land guardianship, and sacred site protection to scientists, economists and citizens outside the community.
• Seed money that helps projects attract additional funding or plan an activity such as a film project that furthers the four areas of SOS support detailed on page one.

Please send a one-to-two-page letter of inquiry that includes a description of your project to: 

Email: tm@sacredland.org

Serving Our Spirits (SOS) grants are administered by Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc.,
a nonprofit educational and charitable organization based in the United States.

Sacred Land Film Project serves a consulting advisory role only.