Throughout winter term at NAYA’s Many Nations Academy (MNA), students enrolled in the Cultural Arts class taught by Renae Menchaca, Pascua Yaqui/White Mtn. Apache, were encouraged to engage in difficult conversations on issues like racism, equality, missing and murdered Indigenous women, Indigenous issues, and pride as part of the class’s social justice art project. EncouragedView Article >
Together united, a community transformed. Watch our year-in-review video here. 2020 has been tremendously challenging year for each of us. We will be honest, when everything came to a standstill in early March, we didn’t know what NAYA’s future would be. Since then, each of us has learned to cope with all of the uncertainties theView Article >
After 16 weeks of training, foster and kinship parents from The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (Grand Ronde) graduated from the first NAYA KEEP group on November 25, 2020. KEEP was designed in partnership with the Oregon Social Learning Center to lessen foster youths’ trauma by providing foster parents with much-needed culturally specific information designedView Article >
Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), the Portland-based organization, today announced it has been selected to receive a $5 million grant from the Day 1 Families Fund. Launched in 2018 by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the Day 1 Families Fund issues annual leadership awards to organizations and civic groups doing compassionate, needle-movingView Article >
Last summer, the Portland City Council approved a plan to distribute $114 million in federal CARES Act relief to the community. City Council allocated $3 million to be awarded as block grants to community nonprofits targeting hard-to-reach entrepreneurs. NAYA, in partnership with the Oregon Native American Chamber (ONAC), was selected as a block grant recipientView Article >
The Urban Land Institute (ULI) Terwilliger Center for Housing has named Nesika Illahee, a 59-unit affordable housing development in Northeast Portland owned and developed by Community Development Partners (CDP) and Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), as the winner of its Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Awards 2020 Chairman’s Award. NesikaView Article >
Ballots for the November election are on their way! NAYA’s Civic Engagement Department has been hard at work hosting events and developing materials to help you feel best prepared to exercise your right to vote. First of all, here is a list of all Multnomah County ballot measures the NAYA Board of Directors has endorsed.View Article >
Fresh off the success of opening the historic Nesika Illahee affordable housing development, the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) has again partnered with Community Development Partners (CDP) and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians (Siletz Tribe) to break ground on its latest project, Mamook Tokatee. Mamook Tokatee, a Chinook Wawa phrase for “makeView Article >
For Indigenous business owners and aspiring Native entrepreneurs in Portland, it often feels like there is a continuous stream of programs, resources, events, and networks to connect with to launch and run a successful business. This is no coincidence. It’s a direct result of an ongoing partnership between the Oregon Native American Chamber (ONAC)—a Portland non-profit thatView Article >
By Many Nations Academy Principal Lisa Otero One thing is for certain, we will never forget the year 2020. For staff at NAYA’s high school—Many Nations Academy—it has been a year of adapting, building, creating, and coming together in service to our students and their families. March 13th hit us hard. It was the lastView Article >