Native American Land Conservancy (Banning, CA)

What happened

The Native American Land Conservancy (NALC) says in a published statement that it was founded in 1998 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focusing on the traditional territory of tribes in present-day Southern California. The statement is signed by Michael J. Madrigal as president and gives a post office box address in Indio, California. ProPublica lists NALC in Banning, California, under EIN 33-0832220, with tax exemption issued in August 1999. That is a different city from the statement's address.

NALC's statement says it restores sacred sites and provides educational programming for Native youth and the public. It says it acquired a 2,560-acre private preserve in San Bernardino County in 2002 to protect a traditional tribal use area. In the same statement, NALC says it opposes the Cadiz Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project.

A 2018 Hi-Desert Star report says the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors authorized conveying a 30.25-acre plot to NALC on May 22. The county had held the land since the late 1970s for flood control. The paper describes NALC as an intertribal nonprofit that preserves endangered Native sacred sites by acquiring land and working with tribes, conservation groups and state agencies. The report says the exact tribe that owns the site had not yet been determined.

Good to know. Not the same as the Native Land Conservancy in Massachusetts. Its leadership and current work may have changed.

Summarized with AI assistance from 5 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error