We hope you had a great holiday break! While we dig out from last week's busy-ness and tee up things for the coming weeks, here are three opportunities to engage and support people and institutions:

Next Interior Fellows Program webinar

Back in September, we introduced our inaugural Next Interior Fellows, Vanessa Raymond and Adam Auerbach. On December 9 (3pm ET, 12pm PT) they’ll give us a run-down of what they’ve accomplished in the Next Interior Fellows Program webinar!

Vanessa is bringing Alaskans into the studio to discuss critical minerals & the future of technology, society, and energy together on her weekly radio show, Them Thar Hills, on KSUA 91.5 FM (Fairbanks). Adam is supporting Next Interior’s work around visioning DOI’s future by holding listening sessions with partner organizations, academics, stakeholders, and rightsholders who have an interest in rebuilding a strong and effective DOI.

Join us next week by registering here: https://bit.ly/NIFP-webinar 

Giving Tuesday

Today’s the big nonprofit giving day of December known as Giving Tuesday. But I'm not going to ask that you give to Next Interior! Replicating last week’s note, I’m going to borrow from an article I did for Indigenous People’s Day that highlighted Native organizations in which people and institutions can and should invest, given the systematic underinvestment that has occurred in Indian Country:

• Native American Fish and Wildlife Society
• NDN Collective
• Native Land Digital
• Native Americans in Philanthropy
• The Implementation Project
• Native American Rights Fund
• Native Lands Advocacy Project and Information System
• National Indian Education Association
• National Congress of American Indians

In addition to this list, today I’ll share and encourage folks to read this piece in Tribal Business News on LandBack success and what further investment can do.

(I don’t have any connections to these organizations other than knowing some folks who work there, simply elevating.)

Next Interior online community - open beta

After a few weeks of testing (thanks beta testers!) and with some starter content developed, we’re going to try opening up our online community for anyone to sign up! We’ll still do manual approvals as rollout continues, so thank you for your patience if the response seems a bit slow.

💬 Join the Next Interior online community 💬

After you get oriented with some intro materials, please dive in and engage! Here are a few areas where we can do more to build a conversation that leads to action:

• Events: Share events, including both in-person (not just DC area!) and virtual that may be of interest to others in the Next Interior community. My hope is that this can be a major hub for helping convene people and get organized.
• News: Highlight Interior-related news and provide context, with greater emphasis on (a) the often overlooked parts of the Department and (b) local news that relates to current or future Interior policy direction. Good news is welcome too of course!
• Mission areas: What are your insights and ideas for the three legs of Interior’s mission—protecting and managing natural and cultural resources, providing science and knowledge about those resources, and serving obligations to Tribes—or the cross-cutting operational work that makes it happen?
• Just want to raise a general topic for discussion with the community? We’ve got a place for that too.

From the break

Last, please enjoy a few shots from Interior lands and waters from the break, including one of those rare Bureau of Land Management parcels in the east (fun ride and the 8 y.o. thought the ramps and features were fun), the Appalachian Trail with a dusting of snow, near the C&O Canal, and everything overhead.