The Senate Bill 1 Sea Level Rise Tribal Cultural Resources Funding Program is funded through a dedicated allocation from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which provides flexible support for California Native American tribes to assess the impacts of SLR on cultural resources, ancestral lands, and heritage, and effectively engage and inform local planning efforts.
Donor Name: California Ocean Protection Council (OPC)
State: California
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 09/12/2025
Size of the Grant: $500,000 to $1 million
Grant Duration: 2 Years
Details:
The goal of the Tribal Cultural Resources Funding Solicitation is to support California Native American tribes in preparing for and adapting to the impacts of SLR on ancestral lands and cultural resources, as well as engaging in local land use planning. This program will provide direct funding to tribes to conduct pre-planning activities (community visioning, data collection, project-related education and outreach, and vulnerability assessments) and planning activities (setting adaptation priorities and developing culturally appropriate strategies to preserve and protect tribal cultural resources threatened by existing coastal hazards or future impacts of SLR). Ultimately, this funding initiative seeks to promote equity, sovereignty, and cultural preservation while building tribal capacity to address SLR challenges. The program also supports tribes in consulting with local jurisdictions, regional jurisdictions, and other coastal management entities to ensure tribal perspectives and traditional knowledge are recognized and inform land use planning processes.
Projects funded by the Tribal Cultural Resources Funding Solicitation should align with OPC’s Strategic Plan Objective 1.1: Build Resiliency to Sea Level Rise, Coastal Storms, Erosion, and Flooding, and Objective 2.1: Enhance Engagement with Tribes. This alignment ensures that funded projects not only strengthen resilience to climate impacts on tribal cultural resources but also foster meaningful collaboration with tribes, respecting tribal sovereignty, traditional knowledge, and priorities. These efforts aim to protect cultural heritage, support adaptive capacity, and promote equitable climate solutions tailored to the unique needs of tribal communities.
Funding Information
Funding available: Up to $5,000,000.00.
- Tribal Cultural Resources projects are anticipated to range between $250,000 and $750,000, however less or more is possible with justification. Project activities should occur within two years.
Eligible Projects
Proposed projects may be categorized into either or both of the following project stages.
- Pre-Planning
- This stage can include community visioning, background research, synthesizing existing data or information, data collection, and vulnerability assessments. Activities in this phase focus on engaging tribal communities to identify shared priorities around significant cultural resources, outreach and education on project-relevant topics and tasks, collecting qualitative and quantitative data (including traditional knowledges), and assessing the risks posed by SLR. Deliverables for pre-planning projects in this stage may include a comprehensive community/tribal visioning statement for achieving SLR resiliency, outreach and education collateral materials, desktop research findings, memos describing generalized and anonymized cultural resource inventories, memos or reports on general findings related to GIS mapping of vulnerable sites, and vulnerability assessments that address cultural and natural resource risks. Fieldwork will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
- Planning
- This stage builds on pre-planning efforts, emphasizing the development of adaptation priorities, resources for planning or consultation in local and regional land use planning, and strategies for implementation. Tribes may define culturally appropriate adaptation priorities and create resources such as databases, case studies, frameworks, or guides to help with project prioritization and implementation. Deliverables for projects in the planning stage may include a prioritized list of adaptation projects or actions, culturally specific adaptation frameworks or memos, and outreach tools for regional partners.
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants that are eligible to apply for the SB 1 Tribal Cultural Resources Funding Solicitation are as follows:
- Federally recognized tribes: Federally recognized tribes must provide evidence of inclusion in the annually published federal register from the Secretary of the Interior pursuant to 25 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 83, Section 104 of the Federally Recognized Indian Tribe List Act of 1994.
- Non-profit organizations applying on behalf of non-federally recognized tribes, an inter-tribal consortium, tribal conservation district, or tribal partnerships: Qualified 501(c)(3) organizations must provide an IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter or printout from the IRS tax-exempt organization search tool on the official IRS website.
For more information, visit OPC.
