Wisdom of the Elders recently participated in a board and staff retreat hosted at Ilani Resort in Ridgefield, Washington. Where our team worked on strategy, goals, and team building for the next 6 months. We would like to extend a special thank you to the Developing Successful People Foundation for facilitating Wisdom Board and Staff Retreat.

As Wisdom has been transitioning and growing, we are taking a look at specific goals and strategies for all of our programming to access how we can best grow and better engage with our Indigenous communities and collaborative partnerships in the Portland Metro Region as well as those we will be working with throughout the states of Oregon and Washington in the years to come.
We are committed to contributing to the educational experiences of our youth and adults by providing training opportunities in the Ecological, STEAM, Multimedia, and Wellness sectors, with the most important goal of helping to heal our people and the land.

Dr. Joseph Hunter, Developing Successful Peoples’ President and Board Chair, facilitated our three-day Retreat. He was a great help in guiding us through the tasks of realigning our strategic plans for the next 3-5 year span. The last 25 years laid the groundwork and curriculum that has been utilized to date. However, we found the need to reassess some elements to make certain Wisdom stays aligned with the ever-growing needs of our Indigenous and broader community and as well as determine how we will deliver our programs with more depth and impact.

The Developing Successful People Foundation was created for the purpose of improving the lives of at-risk school-age children through the introduction, fostering, and/or promotion of Christian values as well as developing children's character by investing in them through programs and other activities that help children be successful in life. Fundable projects include religious, charitable, scientific, and educational purposes consistent with the most recent tax code cessation of 501 (c) (3) regulations.

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Acceptable and specific projects must include goals that meet one or more of the following goals of the Foundation:

The Arts and Student Motivation
School Leadership and Students
Improve the lives of at-risk school-age children by participating in extracurricular activities and/or church activities and events
Aid, support or assist Bible translation and related activities
Aid, support or assist schools, churches, and Non-profits with technology, equipment, and facility improvements with the focus on children and teens or the advancement of the Gospel.

Wisdom of the Elders, Inc offers internships in:

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK): An Indigenous-based curriculum combined with hands-on training can help lead to living-wage jobs and possible opportunities to join our Wisdom Workforce Development Restoration and Conservation crew or to have possible job opportunities in the ecological sector.
Wisdom Agricultural Business Incubator (WABI): Our Business Incubator combines the curriculum of the TEK with First Foods and business training to help those interested in creating their First Foods ventures.
Wisdom Youth Science Education (WYSE): The WYSE program focuses on the STEM/STEAM curriculum. We integrate Indigenous ways of thinking and strategies for teachers and the students to have a more insightful perspective on the sciences and how to navigate the lessons from Western sciences for a fuller understanding of the ways the two concepts converge and or diverge.
Discovering Our Stories (DOS) Wisdom's Historical Trauma curriculum and accompanying films address the Historical Trauma of the Indigenous people of this continent and help in the understanding and healing of the lived experiences and how the effects are still relevant today.
Multimedia: Our films and documentaries have been foundational for Wisdom since the beginning. We offer summer camps to train in the use of the equipment, and how to create and edit footage for use in training for our interns in all programs. Wisdom films and interviews of elders and educators preserve the knowledge of those who have gone before us and allows us to share this with all tribes who contributed and for the new generations coming up.

We are grateful for the facilitation, training, and support from the DSP Foundation grant that Wisdom was awarded to help accomplish the goals for our internships, ongoing curriculum development, preservation of archived films, creation of new films, and jobs training program.

Developing Successful People Philanthropic Foundation

Website: developingsuccessfulpeople.com
Email: Developing_successful_people@yahoo.com
Phone: (503)816-8689
Founder: Merry Holland:
m.holland68.mh@gmail.com
President: Board Chair:
Dr. Joseph Hunter, Ed.D
joseph_hunter@yahoo.com
(360) 650-4304

Ilani Resort & Casino

The ilani Casino Resort is a casino operated by the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and located near La Center, Washington.

Website: laniresort.com
Address: 1 Cowlitz Wy, Ridgefield, WA 98642
You visited on Thursday

Hours:
Open 24 hours
Phone: (877) 464-5264

Wisdom of the Elders 2026 Summer Newsletter

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Wisdom of the elders Multimedia Services

Greetings, Friends of Wisdom,

The summer season has a way of moving fast, and this season has been no exception. Between fieldwork, new partnerships, and the everyday work of listening and preserving, our community showed up for each other and for the land we share.

We're grateful for every hand that helped make this season count, and we're glad to share a bit of it with you here.

Our Wisdom of the Elders archive continues to grow, with new conversations from our tape collection making their way online – elders speaking in their own words, no interruptions, no filters. There is something about hearing a story the way it was actually told, at the pace it was actually told, that no summary has ever managed to hold.

We've also been out in the field this summer with our Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) crew, capturing the land stewardship and ecological knowledge work that grounds so much of what we do.

We spent time with Stephanie Craig, a 7th-generation Kalapuya weaver and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, documenting her basket-weaving practice for an upcoming series, Seven Generations of Knowledge, carried in a pair of hands.

Watch The Featured Video

It Takes Many Hands

We're also proud to be part of the BRANCH Coalition, a group of organizations working together on invasive species removal, native plant restoration, watershed stewardship, and care of urban green spaces across the Portland area.

Our partners in this work include Portland Parks, Urban Forestry Project, Connecting Canopies, The Blueprint Foundation, Depave, Friends of Trees, Verde PDX, Columbia Slough, POIC, APANO, BPI PDX, and the City of Gresham. It takes many hands to care for this land well, and we're grateful to do so alongside organizations that share the same commitment.

Multimedia: Putting 30+ years of Archival footage on the Map

Behind the scenes, we're preparing our full video library for a larger public home so more people can access this work. Our web team is also building out a major piece of our Digital Archive Initiative: an interactive online story map that will let visitors explore our archive by place, connecting oral histories, video, photographs, and traditional ecological knowledge directly to the land they come from.

The stories will no longer live in a list. They will live where they happened so that someone can open the map, find a place they know, and hear an Elder speak about it. It's one of the more ambitious projects we've taken on, and we can't wait to bring it online.

Board of Directors and our Wisdom Radio Program

We're also working closely with our Board of Directors on a full relaunch of our Radio Program, with plans to bring it to every major platform, making it easier than ever to listen wherever you are. Stay tuned; this one's been a long time coming, and we're excited to share more soon.

Fall 2026 Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge Internship Enrollment is Now Open!

We're excited to announce that enrollment is officially open for our Fall 2026 ITEK Internship, and we can't wait to welcome our next cohort! We're accepting applications from anyone passionate about Environmental Conservation & Restoration and how Wisdom integrates Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) into our work.

This paid 12-week program combines hands-on fieldwork with partner organizations, along with in-person and online sessions covering ITEK, STEAM-related concepts, and Native American cultural arts and plant knowledge. Interns earn $19.00 an hour. It's a hands-on, heart-forward opportunity to build real skills while deepening your connection to land and community.

Spots are limited, so don't wait!

Questions are always welcome. Contact

dawn@wisdomoftheelders.org and carmelina@wisdomoftheelders.org

We can't wait to see who joins us this Fall!

ITEK VIDEO

Save the Date

Wieden+Kennedy: Dec 5, 2026

Seeds of Wisdom Event

There's one more thing we've been building toward, and we're glad to finally share it.

Later this year, we'll gather in person for Seeds of Wisdom, our end-of-year fundraiser, hosted at Wieden+Kennedy here in Portland. Wisdom of the Elders is creating an event centered on Indigenous storytelling, environmental stewardship, and workforce development the same three threads that run through everything you've just read. It felt right to bring them into one room.

We're looking for partners who want to support meaningful community impact while helping amplify Native voices and leadership in Portland and beyond. If that sounds like you, or like an organization you're part of, we would love to hear from you. We're building our partner roster now, which means there's still real room to help shape what this evening becomes.

***As a note for those who have supported us through Willamette Week's Give!Guide in past years, we're not part of Give!Guide this season.

We've Joined Earth Gives

Earth Gives is a nationwide platform connecting donors with organizations advancing solutions for people and the planet.

It is a natural fit for us: our work has always lived where cultural preservation and ecological stewardship meet the archive and the watershed, the storyteller and the seed, and Earth Gives puts that work in front of people across the country who care about both.

Our end-of-year giving runs through Seeds of Wisdom and Earth Gives and we hope you'll join us there instead.

If you've been looking for a simple way to support what you've read about here, this is it.

Want to stay closer to what we're up to day-to-day? Find us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube; more is coming there soon, including TikTok and Threads.

There's more coming this fall. Thank you for being part of it.

Wisdom of the Elders, Inc.

Portland, Oregon

wisdomoftheelders.org

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