One hundred and thirty-eight like-minded professionals convened here this week for three days of networking, field trips and group work on projects, at the Sustainable Southeast Partnership Spring Retreat. Today was the last day of the retreat.
Sustainable Southeast Partnership is a program of Spruce Root, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2012 and designated by the U.S. Treasury as a Community Development Financial Institution.
Spruce Root administers the partnership as a “collective impact network” that involves more than 50 Southeast Alaska organizations in sectors such as renewable energy, natural resources, fisheries, food sovereignty, youth services and government.
A diverse array of partnership members work across their different fields “to ensure that this place is here for future generations,” Spruce Root executive director Alana Peterson said in an interview today.
Network partners meet in person once each year for the spring retreat, and hold monthly, virtual calls throughout the year. Peterson said this is the eleventh or twelfth year of the retreat. "There were about ten of us” the first few years, she said..
Partnership work has “slowly grown over the years … because people who show up find value in it, and find that this is a way for them to achieve some end goal they have,” Peterson said.
This year’s retreat at Harrigan Centennial Hall drew Sitka organizations – such as the city Planning Department and Sitka Tribe of Alaska – and many others from Prince of Wales Island, Ketchikan, Angoon, Kake, Hoonah, Juneau, Haines, Klukwan, Skagway, Yakutat, Anchorage, and Homer, and from the states of Washington and Oregon.
There were guests representing Sealaska Inc., Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, The Nature Conservancy, SalmonState, Renewable Energy Alaska Project, EcoTrust, Wilburforce Foundation, and Patagonia’s Home Planet Fund.
The retreat emphasizes a “specific approach to collaboration that allows participants to bring their best knowledge and wisdom to the table and figure out how to show up in a good way and work together,” Peterson said.
While in Sitka the partners are “building relationships and connections with each other, and identifying what kind of work people want to focus on,” she said.
Small breakout groups are diving into project areas such as climate adaptation, research methods, community healing, and planning for cultural uses of wood.
Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist, the SSP Regional Healing Catalyst with the Juneau-based nonprofit Haa Tóoch Lichéesh, said she worked with a focus group this week to “define what healing is” in a way that could be employed throughout the region.
S’eiltin said her group decided to develop a common definition of healing that could draw people to address the “ripple effects of colonial harm” in order to be “lighter, and improve their work.”
S’eiltin said she works year-round to raise awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, promote truth and healing from the harms of residential boarding school institutions, restore Native cemeteries, and reconnect people with traditional plant medicines.
“Society tells us to continue to move forward, put on that thick skin and push through,” but people need to “process traumas in order to move forward,” S’eiltin said. “Healing should be woven into every single aspect, and at the forefront of all subjects."
During this week’s conference, S’eiltin also did some one-on-one healing work with conference participants and joined preparations for an upcoming local koo.éex’.
Participants also took field trips to learn from local workers at the Southeast Alaska Tribal Ocean Research lab, Outer Coast College, Selkie Snorkels, the Green Lake Hydroelectric Project dam, Sitka Trail Works, Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, Sitka Native Education Program, Sitka Conservation Society, Sitka Sound Science Center, Sitka Public Library and the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association.
Edith Johnson’s Our Town Catering provided food for the gathering and Allen Marine Tours provided a whale-watching cruise for participants.
Peterson said that federal grants have been the primary funding source for SSP over the past five or six years. Original SSP funders include Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies and he Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Many private funders still contribute to the partnership.
Peterson explained that much of the funding toward SSP doesn’t actually pass through Spruce Root’s books, but goes directly to the tribal government or organization hosting an SSP project or position.
Spruce Root does fund SSP's “backbone administration support," including food, rentals and all of the staff members who work on the spring retreat program, Peterson said.
She said federal funding cutbacks are reaching SSP, citing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's recent freeze of a $2.9 million “Community Change” grant for Spruce Root and the Organized Village of Kake.
The grant was meant to fund climate-related projects in Kake, as well as the next two years of SSP’s work, including the spring retreats.
As it happens, SSP is well-prepared to deal with federal funding cutbacks, Peterson said.
"About seven or eight years ago we thought, 'We need our own funding source, we can’t rely on federal funding or private philanthropy forever,’” she said.
So, Spruce Root built the Seacoast Trust, an endowment-like fund which currently has a fund balance of $27 or $28 million.
“We knew there would be a reason to have our own funding so that we could make our own decisions and be self-determining as a region about where we think funds should be prioritized for,” Peterson said.
Sealaska jump-started the fund with a $10 million commitment, and the Nature Conservancy contributed another $8 million in matching funds.
Spruce Root has continued "fundraising hard" for over the past five or six years, and with a target of a $100 million balance in the Seacoast Trust.
Spruce Root holds the funds, which are designated "to fund this program, the Sustainable Southeast Partnership work," Peterson said.
The SSP Steering Committee establishes program strategy and priorities for the Seacoast Trust. Committee members are nominated by SSP participants during each spring retreat, and are confirmed by the Spruce Root Board of Directors.
Spruce Root runs two main programs besides SSP. It administers a lending program for small businesses and entrepreneurs, and also runs a technical assistance program called Path to Prosperity, Peterson said.
