LatinaLista —
Campaign: Navajo Onanon Foundation Lake Powell Expeditions
Leonard Miller, president of the Navajo Onanon Foundation, is passionate about the Navajo Nation. He grew up on the reservation in an average neighborhood. No water. No power.
Returning to his childhood home after years away achieving business succes, he found not a lot had changed in his old neighborhood.
As a result, he saw that in many communities on the Navajo Nation, there is an urgent need to provide Navajo youth with skills and support to help them recognize their own strengths and talents. But even more, they need to be provided with the economic opportunities to grow and flourish within the Navajo Nation.
Real business opportunities that promote self- sufficiency for Native American youth; that improve their quality of life, that preserve their culture. They need hope for a better future.
To achieve these goals, Miller has created the NAVAJO ONANON FOUNDATION, a non-profit organization that will be self-sustaining within the Navajo Nation.
The purpose of the foundation will be to do preservation work by expanding an expedition presence to be a more effective deterrent against sacred site desecration.
All profits from the expeditions are going to be used to generate funds to further protect Navajo sacred sites, and to implement initiatives to grow and stimulate the local Navajo economy.
As part of the Navajo site preservation program, the foundation will conduct expeditions to document the condition of their sacred sites, to build a database, and to deter damage or desecration through visibility and high volume visitation to sites that are accessible, by water only, from the shores of Lake Powell in Northern Arizona.
The foundation plans to conduct TOH-YIL-KAL (lake) expeditions for site documentation work around Lake Powell in 2015.
The campaign’s goal is $155,000 and ends on December 1.
