We develop and nurture climate councils in the Northeastern United States as a way to foster engagement, solutions, and community.

Our inaugural council was launched in 2022 on Indigenous Peoples’ Day with a focus on the intersection of indigenous knowledge and climate leadership in collaboration with non-native allies.

By 2035, our goal is to foster a network of 7,000 climate partners throughout the Northeast bioregion through council-based programs and community events.

We launched the Berkshire Climate Leadership Collaborative in January of 2024 for organizational representatives in the Berkshires and western Massachusetts. To learn more about joining the 2025 Council, click here, or contact Executive Director, Lev Natan, directly, at lev@allianceforaviablefuture.org.

We gathered in October of 2022, in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day weekend, as a council of of thirty community members from fifteen tribal nations as well as non-native allies from around our Berkshires region. It was a truly historic weekend for many reasons.

Building relationships by listening together in council, we welcomed community members from the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians to their ancestral homelands (watch this amazing video), and engaged in deeply healing ceremonies that brought tears to many eyes.

One of these ceremonies including the planting of a tree. The Tree symbolizes the establishment of the Northeast Indigenous Climate Council, and represents peace, healing and the beginning of a new era of truth, reconciliation, and forward movement.  

We also honored active community members from the Mohican tribe, Shawn Stevens and the Gitasee Singers powwow drum group by inviting them to open an event at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center honoring Native America. 

At this event, the award-winning writer and teacher Larry Spotted Crow Mann received the first annual NAACP-Berkshires Dorothy Davids Indigenous Award - a truly historical moment. This award was created by NAACP President, Dennis Powell in 2021, after he was inspired by being invited to speak at AVF’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day Ceremonial Walk in Great Barrington. Later that year, he contacted AVF’s Executive Director, Lev Natan, to ask what an appropriate name would be for the award. Lev contacted Shawn, who worked with the Mohican culture and language committee to choose the name for the award.

Following this powerful evening, council members joined together at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health for the Listening Deeply Indigenous Voices Livestream to discuss current issues facing indigenous communities, hope for the future, and to answer questions from audience members.

Concluding the weekend, members of the Great Barrington community joined with the council for a ceremonial walk in solidarity with Indigenous people everywhere.