Dear Friend of Global Response,
We are taking a great step forward! This month, Global Response is merging with Cultural Survival, a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, MA.
Cultural Survival has an impressive 35-year history as an effective advocate for the rights of Indigenous Peoples worldwide. You may be familiar with their much-acclaimed publication, the Cultural Survival Quarterly. Global Response has partnered with Cultural Survival on key campaigns where both the human rights of Indigenous Peoples and the environment are at stake. Now we will combine our strengths—Global Response’s successful environmental advocacy and Cultural Survival’s expertise in international human rights—to more effectively protect the lands, natural resources, and rights of Indigenous Peoples.
As a Global Response member, you automatically become a member of Cultural Survival for one year—and of course we hope you will want to stay with us for many years to come. You can look forward to receiving your first free issue of the Cultural Survival Quarterly in October. Be sure to look for the special section where you’ll find our first Cultural Survival/Global Response action alert—one version for adults and another for youth. This is how we are now distributing our hardcopy action alerts. As a bonus, you’ll have the benefit of reading Quarterly articles about many aspects of Indigenous Peoples’ lives, cultures, and struggles for justice.
We were motivated to pursue this merger because it conserves our own resources, broadens the scope and tactics of our campaigns, and more than doubles our letter-writing power as we engage Cultural Survival members in our letter-writing activism.
We expect you will have questions about how this will work, so here are some answers.
- Global Response now becomes a program under the auspices of Cultural Survival. Our executive director, Paula Palmer, becomes director of Cultural Survival’s Global Response program.
- The Global Response program’s mission is to help Indigenous communities win struggles to protect their environment and defend their rights. We will continue to develop our campaigns at the request of indigenous communities.
- An international advisory board will assist staff in developing campaigns.
- Two people nominated by Global Response’s outgoing Board of Directors will serve on Cultural Survival’s Board of Directors. These are Roy Young, founder of Global Response, and Suzanne Benally (Navajo and Santa Clara Tewa), Chief Diversity Officer at Naropa University and a professor in Naropa’s Environmental Studies department.
- The Global Response program will continue to be run out of our office in Boulder, Colorado.
- We will form a Boulder-based Cultural Survival Western Outreach Committee to help organize Cultural Survival/Global Response outreach events, including Indigenous Arts Bazaars.
- If you receive our action alerts by email, you will continue to receive them. You can also sign up to receive email alerts at www.culturalsurvival.org
- Your incoming donations to Global Response will be automatically transferred to Cultural Survival, where they will continue to support our campaign work. We’ll ask you to write your next check to Cultural Survival
Please feel free to call Paula at 303 444-0306 ext. 103, or Cultural Survival’s executive director Ellen Lutz at 617 441-5400 ext. 16 if you would like to talk over any aspect of the merger.
We are confident that this merger is the best way to assure that embattled communities receive the help they need to defend their rights and protect the forests, rivers, wetlands, mountains, coral reefs, and all the other precious ecosystems they call home.
As always, our success will depend on your support. Every letter you write for our campaigns and every check you write to Cultural Survival will increase our chances of winning these critical battles for our planet’s most vulnerable places and peoples.
So, look for the Cultural Survival Quarterly in your mailbox next month, check out www.culturalsurvival.org, and please keep writing letters for our campaigns. We hope you’ll feel renewed energy and commitment for this new leg of our journey, as we do!
With good wishes,
Roy Young, Founder
Jane Bunin, Board Chair
Paula Palmer, Executive Director
