What We Do

In our Anishinaabeg Prophecies, this time is known as the time of the Seventh Fire.  In this time, we are told we will face a choice between two paths - one well-worn and scorched and a second not well worn and green.  It will be our choice upon which path to embark. In Anishinaabeg Akiing, we are choosing the green path and lighting the Eighth Fire by heralding in a restorative and regenerative economy.

Our Mission

In 2017, we launched Akiing, a regional integrated community development initiative, aimed at restoring a regionally integrated Anishinaabe economy focused on food, energy, and value added production. 

We begin in the village of Pine Point.  Our community has been a poster child for tribal poverty in northern Minnesota.  It has the highest rate of boarded homes, one out of three adult males are involved with the criminal justice system, and over half the community members are unemployed or out of the workforce.  In 2013, the median income at Pine Point was $19,500 compared to $46,915 statewide. Families make up 81% of the population, but 88% of those families are single-parent homes. Therefore, because of the disadvantages and marginalization it can be said that nearly all Pine Point youth are "at risk" and are the core of our work for empowerment and healing.

Within the White Earth, over 85 % of the land is held by non-Native landholders, including the federal, state and county governments.  For decades we have sought return of land, yet face structural and entrenched poverty. This work is about recovering and creating a new economy.  Most importantly, in our words, lighting the Eighth Fire.

Our integrated work over the past thirty years has laid the groundwork to launch a regional sustainable economic development strategy for Anishinaabe Akiing. 

Through this work we will reduce the economic losses in energy and fuel, and create a strong value-added integrated food and hemp fiber industry for northern Minnesota, and a model for Native communities nationally. 

Growth

Akiing is a formal 501(c)3. During the harsh times of the pandemic and the Enbridge occupation, we grew dramatically into five programs: 8th Fire Solar, Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute, the New Green Revolution- Hemp Economy, Leadership Development, and Land Back. 

With a growing team and generous donor support, we’ve been able to purchase land, buildings and infrastructure necessary as the foundation for the work on the just transition, or the 8th fire, as we call it. In total, we’ve purchased almost 800-acres of land strategically within the 1855 Treaty Territory, and the White Earth Reservation, with new initiatives emerging at Mooningwaanikaaning. 

The recovery of land has been matched with on-the-ground work on outreach, training, and strategic planning for our renewable energy and farming programs. That work has resulted in installations of solar thermal panels in northern Minnesota, and now the emergent possibility of a partnership in the Navajo nation. As well, our farming work has grown significantly, both with new team and amazing partnerships with allies like Heritage Foods and the Ann Saxelby Scholarship Fund for farm interns. 

This has also been a time of leadership development, focused on the Horse Nations Academy, and an emerging set of programs to train tribal members regionally in essential farming and renewable energy programs. To better carry out our work in the future, Akiing is the mother of a new set of emerging cooperatives. This includes 8th Fire Solar (producing solar thermal panels), an emergent Indigenous Hemp and Cannabis Cooperative, and Anishinaabe Farmers’ Cooperative. This work focuses on Indigenous ecological principles and adaptation in a time of climate chaos. This work is also focused on hemp, that is fiber hemp which can heal our world.