Reclaiming Nationhood, Healing Our People, and Why Native Futures Need More Than Applause
By Lynnette Grey Bull

November is Native American Heritage Month — a time when the nation pauses to acknowledge the First Peoples of this land. But for us, it’s not about commemoration. It’s continuation.

We were not supposed to survive this world.
Not after the boarding schools.
Not after the rivers were poisoned, the buffalo slaughtered, the children taken.
Not after our lands were stolen, our languages outlawed, and our women disappeared.

And yet — here we stand.
Not only alive, but leading.
Not only surviving, but building.
Not only praying for better days, but making them with our own hands.

We are the generation our ancestors prayed would come —
the ones strong enough to carry the trauma,
wise enough to remember the teachings,
and determined enough to rebuild a world worthy of our daughters.

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Native Heritage Is Not a Month — It’s a Mandate

Native American Heritage Month should never be reduced to cultural performances, classroom lessons, or feel-good recognition. For Native communities, it’s a reminder of survival and a call to responsibility — to continue the work of healing, rebuilding, and reclaiming what was taken.

Our heritage lives in motion.
It’s in the aunties who run crisis hotlines with little funding.
It’s in the youth who organize climate marches and water protection campaigns.
It’s in the Native nonprofits who keep our families safe, our languages alive, and our ceremonies intact.

But survival alone is not enough.
The goal was never to simply endure.
The goal is sovereignty — to thrive, to heal, and to lead our own narratives forward.

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The Sacred Weight of Leadership

Native women are leading the most urgent fights of our time — the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives crisis, climate justice, youth empowerment, and land defense. We do this work with prayer, exhaustion, brilliance, and love.

We are not tired of the work.
We are tired of doing sacred work in systems that still do not see us.

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Funding Native Work Is Justice, Not Charity

Native-led organizations receive less than 0.4% of philanthropic funding in the United States.
When the communities that have lost the most receive the least, which is not a funding gap — it is a moral failure.

Funding Native work is not charity.
It is justice.
It is repair, restitution, and restoration.

Our organizations do not exist for applause; they exist because our people are still going missing, our youth are still being groomed and trafficked, and our elders are still being overlooked.

Native American Heritage Month is the perfect time to reflect — but reflection without redistribution is performance.
If you honor Indigenous leadership, invest in it.
If you admire Indigenous resilience, sustain it.
If you post about Indigenous women, fund the ones still doing the work.

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When Native Women Lead, Nations Heal

Native women have always been the backbone of our Nations.
We mother movements.
We turn trauma into policy, grief into advocacy, and prayer into action.

When Native women lead, we don’t lead for power — we lead for people.
We protect future generations. We rebuild balance.

Through Not Our Native Daughters, the nonprofit I founded to confront human trafficking and violence against Indigenous people, and through Indigenous Youth Voices, a program designed to empower Native youth in conservation and leadership, I have seen what true sovereignty looks like — it’s women and youth leading with cultural strength, not colonial validation.

We built these spaces because no one else was coming to save us.
And we continue to build them, with or without the funding the world owes us.

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From Survival to Sovereignty

We learned to fight so our daughters could dream — and that fire still burns.
Every prayer, every march, every beaded earring and ribbon skirt is an act of survival and defiance.

Our survival was never the goal — sovereignty is.
Native American Heritage Month is not a history lesson — it’s a living movement.

The future is Indigenous.
Led by women.
Fueled by ancestors.
Carried by daughters.

We are not asking for permission to lead — we already are.
We are not waiting for a seat at the table — we are building our own.

And we do not rise alone — because when Native women rise, we rise for all our relations.

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A Call to Action

Support Indigenous-led organizations.
Partner with Native women doing the work.
Invest in the youth who will inherit what we leave behind.

Our liberation depends on shared responsibility and shared healing.
Native people were not supposed to survive — and yet, we lead with open hands, strong hearts, and prayers older than this nation.

This Native American Heritage Month, don’t just celebrate our existence.
Stand with us in our persistence.
Fund Indigenous women.
Support Indigenous youth.
Walk beside us as we protect what our ancestors protected — land, water, and life itself.

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About the Author:
Lynnette Grey Bull (Northern Arapaho / Hunkpapa Lakota) is the Founder and Executive Director of Not Our Native Daughters, a national MMIWR and Human Trafficking organization. She also leads Indigenous Youth Voices, a conservation and leadership program for Native youth. Her advocacy centers on healing, sovereignty, and Indigenous women’s leadership.