Announcing the 2024 Wičhóyaŋke Network Grant Awardees

The Safety and Justice Challenge’s Wičhóyaŋke Network awards three grants to Indigenous-centered organizations for 2024-2025 grant cycle.

JMI is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2024 Wičhóyaŋke Network Grant, funded by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Wičhóyaŋke Network, launched in December 2021, is a network expansion project funded through the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) and created to address the impacts of over-incarceration of Indigenous and Native community members. The 2024-2025 grant cycle was able to accommodate three separate grants spread across the United States. The awardees are valued members of the Wičhóyaŋke Network with an established history of working with justice-impacted Native American individuals and communities. JMI deeply admires the dedication of these Network members in addressing systemic inequalities within Native American communities and is proud to support their projects, described below.

University of Arizona Wassaja Center

The University of Arizona Wassaja Center in Tucson, Arizona, will form a local collaborative with justice stakeholders and system-impacted individuals. The collaborative will primarily consist of Native American individuals, but also include key stakeholders from the Pima County Attorney’s Office, Pima County Justice Service, and Pima County Pre-Trial Services.  The Attorneys General from the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Tohono O’odham Nation will also be invited to serve on the Committee. Over the life of the grant, these stakeholders will work to create a regional tribal and non-tribal resource guide including information about judicial, social services, workforce, education, housing, medical, and/or assistance programs tailored to meet the need of incarcerated families and justice-impacted individuals.

Voices of Change LLC

Voices of Change LLC in Tucson, Arizona, currently operates “Sacred Traditions,” an eight-week Native American focused program that incorporates culturally specific activities such as prayer, walking the Red Road, the Medicine Wheel, talking circles, writing exercises, and journaling to help justice- impacted Native Americans reconnect with their spiritual roots and sacred traditions. The grant funding will allow Voices of Change to offer Sacred Traditions programming within the Pima County Transition Center. In addition to implementing the program, Native American justice-impacted participants will be asked to complete two pre- and post- surveys and post-course interviews, the results of which will be used to identify program levels of success and determine if Sacred Traditions can be identified as an evidence-based recidivism reduction program.

Missoula County Community Justice Department

Missoula County Community Justice Department in Missoula, Montana, will build on their work as the county’s convening agency for justice system initiatives to expand and compile a statewide resource guide which lists mental health, housing, and treatment resources that have a Native American cultural focus. Through this grant, a regional committee will be formed to create and disseminate a resource guide including all eight recognized tribes in Montana and the currently existing resources and treatments in place on each reservation, as well as additional treatment and Wellbriety (an Indigenous approach to sobriety that focuses on total wellbeing) facilities outside the state. In addition to collecting information on these resources, the committee will gather additional information on and increase communication about the needs and resources across communities, and to work on strengthening collaboration among and accessibility to existing resources. Using the expertise of justice system stakeholders, Indigenous leaders, and interviews with community members, the updated resource guide will be disseminated across Montana, as well as the greater Pacific Northwest to connect Native justice-impacted individuals with resources and assistance.

The JMI team would like to extend their congratulations and gratitude to all grant awardees. We are looking forward to the development of each project and strengthening Native communities and individuals involved with the criminal legal system.

About the Wičhóyaŋke Network

The Wičhóyaŋke Network is a convening of Indigenous leaders from both the community and the criminal justice system, who have lived experience of implementing strategies to assist Indigenous communities to overcome the traumas and effects of racial disparities within the criminal justice system. For more information about the Network, please contact aimeew@jmijustice.org.