HEALR Project
A 501(c)3 Public Charity
Our Story
Who We Are
Our Story
HEALR, Healing Education and Land Restoration Project, is the first school designed by Yomba Shoshone people, for Yomba Shoshone children, on Yomba Shoshone land. This is what educational sovereignty looks like when a community builds it themselves.
Our Elders carry the knowledge. Our families carry the vision. Our children carry the future. HEALR is where all of that meets the land.
A Community Led School
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HEALR is Indigenous-led and community-grounded. Decisions about what our children learn, when they learn it, and who teaches them are made through a Participatory Action Research (PAR) process that centers the voices of Yomba Shoshone families, Elders, and the children themselves. Community members are co-researchers and co-designers of the school. The curriculum grows out of what our families and Elders identify as important for the next generation to carry forward, not out of what an outside institution decides Indigenous children should know. Our Elders shape what land-based learning looks like season by season. Our families guide the rhythm of the school year around the seasonal rounds, including pine nut camp, root camp, and the times when children need to be with their people rather than in a classroom.
What Our Children Learn
Our students are between the ages of 5 and 12. They learn traditional ecological knowledge, riparian restoration, the Shoshone language, and food sovereignty. They learn by collecting pine nuts in the fall, walking the Reese River ecosystem, sitting with Elders, and following the seasons that have always structured Newe life. Students receive a complete education, grounded in Western Shoshone epistemology, that meets and exceeds state academic standards on our own terms. The methodology developed to demonstrate this, Educational Sovereignty Curriculum Mapping (ESCM), is assertive, not comparative. It does not ask whether Indigenous knowledge measures up. It shows that it already does.
Where We Are
Our micro-school opens September 1, 2026, on the Yomba Shoshone Reservation in Nye County, Nevada. We are beginning in a temporary structure while we raise funds for a permanent yurt.
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What we are looking for
Partners who understand that Tribal educational sovereignty is not negotiable. Funders who trust Indigenous-led work without requiring us to translate ourselves into colonial metrics. Educators who are willing to learn from the land alongside our children. Friends who see this work for what it is.
If you see yourself in any of this, reach out.
