We are the Culture Keepers
The Culture Keepers is the national grassroots movement of Indigenous, African-descendant, Latiné, Asian, Pacific Islander, and other cultural communities formed to protect our cultural resources—the people, places, practices, and treasures that document our contributions to the United States of America.
The Culture Keepers Circle achieves its mission through three activities: (1) tracking threats to cultural resources, (2) convening experts and communities, and (3) celebrating culture and advocacy.
The Circle built and operates the Cultural Resources Threat Tracker, the nation’s first and only AI-powered platform that tracks federal cultural-policy actions across seventeen agencies and surfaces patterns of harm to the cultural communities the actions reach.
The people, places, practices, and treasures that tell the story of our contributions to American society are under attack.
As a result of the federal government’s ongoing attacks, we stand to permanently lose over 13.4 billion artifacts, 640 million acres of public land, innumerable cultural resources within 3.7 million square nautical miles of national waterways, and funding for more than 500,000 scholars, artists, and other knowledge keepers.
The Circle mobilizes people to disrupt the government’s attempts to control our history,
silence our cultures, and take over our public lands and waterways.
Together with our supporters, The Circle is reimagining how our communities protect, access, and share our cultural resources with the world.
STAND IN YOUR POWER AS A CULTURE KEEPER
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STAND IN YOUR POWER AS A CULTURE KEEPER ✦
our focus areas
We take action across six areas to protect
and sustain our cultural resources:
Raise national visibility about the threats to cultural resources and demand transparency and access from institutions that hold them.
Block the destruction, sale, or disappearance of cultural resources held in public trust.
Uplift and advocate for knowledge keepers who preserve, interpret, and share cultural memory.
Use emerging technologies to archive endangered cultural materials before they are lost.
Co-create platforms with communities that ensure open, ethical access to cultural resources.
Reimagine sustainability within the cultural sector at the local, regional, national, and international levels. Invest in long-term preservation efforts.