At Tribal Minds, we are unlocking the potential of Native Nevada through asset-based thinking and community-led programs. We are revolutionizing how we understand opportunities and resource management from the bottom up.
Star Village
We can't just develop as communities without grappling with settler-colonialism. The loss of our culture was part of the genocide against us as Indigenous people. For Indigenous community development to be successful, we have to also create and recreate ourselves -- our rituals, our cultures, our way of understanding our identities. Cultural revitalization is central to Indigenous community development.
For twenty years, we have been working on cultural revitalization in Northern Nevada: Star Village. A progressive vision from the crossroads of Tribal peoples in urban Reno, which also inspired other local community-rooted enterprises like Native-owned Star Village Coffee, Star Village community development puts Native development back into the hands of Native communities ourselves.
We bottomline ceremonial community events revitalizing culture while building social capital rooted in the Great Basin. Then, we focus on providing technical assistance to other Native people to adapt Star Village cultural revitalization templates to suit their own needs. We believe that this sharing of cultural revitalization practices brings us together as Tribes, but more importantly, builds the collective power of each Tribal community.
In 2024, Star Village included:
- >210 participants estimated, >95% Indigenous
- Nevada, Utah, California, and Honduras-based programming
- Third year of international programming with Lenca people in Honduras
- 38 sweet lodges, both non-gendered and women's only
- 2 Sun Dances, each 4 days, with lodging and travel
- 1 Family Dance
Star Village is designed to unlock new potentials and new collectives. We continue to operate intentionally with Tribal communities in the United States and beyond to adapt Star Village.
Previous Community Development Projects
Tribal Impact Rez Tour
Murals for Change
In both 2021 and 2023, Tribal Minds, Inc. crossed Nevada to raise awareness on how Tribal Impact bills passed in the Nevada Legislature impact our community development. We traveled from urban communities to the most rural and remote Tribes, dozens in weeks, discussing with Tribal people everywhere the futures of our communities and the next seven generations.
In 2024, we worked alongside Paramount's Content for Change division to realize a community vision in the heart of Las Vegas: Murals for Change. These brought the second through fifth Indigenous murals to the Las Vegas valley, home to the center of urban Native experience. The opening reception alone engaged 17 Tribes, 3 Countries, and 5 U.S. states. 19 organizations were also present.
Governance Trainings
With the generous support of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, Tribal Minds, Inc. ran the 2023 Native Nevada Governance Project to provide free workshops on Tribal governance. Good governance empowers leaders of our sovereign Nations with knowledge to develop more effective and efficient programs to support our communities working together across Tribal borders to forge new Indigenous solutions for Indigenous problems that will uplift Native people throughout the state: urban, rural and remote.
We divided our program based on the three regions of Native Nevada. Tribal Chairs, Councilmembers, and Administrators were invited to both shape their regional workshop around the needs of their Tribe and to participate in the Workshop.
Eight Tribes participated in one workshop alone: the northwestern regional.
Native Youth Performing Arts
Powwow Dance Club
We're fortunate to have run a weekly in-season powwow dance club from 2022 to 2024, completing its run after a third season,. We built community through family strengthening, mentoring and grounding Native children into relational artistic networks and cultural connection. The club also connected guests in the powwow circuit to participants, lodging Nevada Native kids into larger networks of social capital.
In total, we held approximately 48 powwow dance club sessions.
From 2021, we have worked with other organizations to facilitate the interstate annual Native Youth Performing Arts Camps, in which we drove eight Nevada Native children to central Oregon to participate in the camp in 2024 alone. This directly built community across Tribal borders between children while also connecting them to performing arts as a potential future, paired with industry involvement and connection from Paramount.
We love to make new relatives
Let’s Connect
We are excited to be a part of the next evolution of Tribal identity, wellness, community, and prosperity.
Experience
Send Us a Message
WE’RE ALWAYS LOOK FOR NEW AND EXCITING WAYS TO UPLIFT NATIVE NEVADA.
So much of the work is done in the creative space and then made tangible for our communities.
We can’t wait to meet you. Let’s see what we can do together!
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Tribal Minds, Inc. based?
Where do you operate?
We are a statewide Native-led nonprofit that aims to empower Tribal spaces in rural and urban Nevada. Our focus is on remote Indian reservations that often get overlooked and underfunded. We have strong alliances with Nevada's Tribes, organizers, and other in-state leaders that work to bring attention to the Tribal needs of the Great Basin. Beyond Nevada, we have built relationships with institutions across the country and beyond - particularly through cultural programming with Lenca relatives in Honduras.
Tribal Minds, Inc. originated on the Hungry Valley Indian Reservation, a Tribal Community of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. Currently, we are based in Reno, Nevada as we serve Tribal communities across the state. We understand Reno to be a center where Tribal people across the Great Basin work, live, find community, and find each other.
What organizations or institutions are you willing to work with?
Who do you provide services to?
Tribal Minds is willing and eager to work with all organizations that energetically align with our purpose of developing Native solutions for Native issues and the infrastructure to support that. We wish to build relationships that are prosperous and healthy and center the People and the Land.
At Tribal Minds, we prioritize and center the most oppressed in Tribal communities through intentional outreach beyond just the urban core. We regularly run programming in both rural and remote areas of Nevada. We also place a strong emphasis on working together in coalition with other BIPOC-led organizations workng towards liberation.
