our STORY
African-descendant, Indigenous, Latiné, Asian/Pacific Islander, and other cultural communities have made foundational contributions to American society.
Our “cultural resources” – artifacts, artworks, manuscripts, historic sites, ancestral lands and waterways – document our contributions to this country and provide context for the current struggles our communities are experiencing.
Yet for as long as we can remember, governments and institutions have claimed ownership over our cultural resources, often minimizing and erasing our contributions.
They took our artifacts, artworks, cultural expressions, historic places, ancestral lands, and sacred waterways, and reclassified them as “government property” without due process or our consent. Cultural erasure campaigns have suppressed our languages, spiritual practices, celebrations, and traditional knowledge systems. The government shut down, ignored, and even punished people who tried to keep their cultures alive.
Even with all these challenges, our communities never stopped fighting to protect our cultures.
Over many years, Indigenous, African-descendant, Latiné, AAPI, and other communities partnered with federal agencies, negotiated the retrieval of sacred objects, and demanded public acknowledgment of their stories. Our knowledge keepers and elders have always taken it upon themselves to ensure that our public parks, museums, libraries, art galleries, and performance halls preserve our contributions as publicly owned goods.
Now, the federal government is launching a strategic campaign to fully erase us.
Federal authorities are slashing the cultural sector’s $25 billion budget, firing many of the sector’s 225,000 employees, defunding grants for artists and knowledge keepers, and leveraging funding and administrative control to rewrite how nearly 40,000 institutions represent our histories. We fear outright destruction and sale of artifacts, privatization of public lands and coasts, environmental abuses, and marginalization of artists who document and challenge racism, xenophobia, and exceptionalism. These attacks are strategic—aimed at severing communities from the artifacts, practices, and stories that sustain their identities and empower their self-determined futures.
Because of these ongoing attacks, 13.4 billion artifacts, 640 million acres of public land, and innumerable cultural resources within 3.7 million square nautical miles of U.S. waterways could be permanently lost.
That’s why we created The Culture Keepers Circle
a national grassroots movement to protect the people, places, practices, and treasures that embody our contributions to American society.
By coming together, The Circle pushes back against the government’s attempts to control our history, silence our culture, take our sacred lands, and harm our vital waterways. Together with our supporters, The Circle is reimagining how our communities protect, access, and share our cultural resources with the world.
MEET OUR FOUNDER
A. Prince Albert III
A. Prince Albert III, affectionately known as Prince The Culture Keeper™, is a cultural advocate, law professor, and multidisciplinary artist. Prince is the founder of The Culture Keepers Circle and teaches the groundbreaking Cultural Sustainability Law course at one of the nation's top law schools. He regularly engages audiences on how cultural communities preserve their traditions, practices, and ways of life. Beyond advocacy and academia, as a DJ/music producer and filmmaker, ‘The Culture Keeper’ employs dynamic soundscapes and immersive imagery to educate audiences about Afro-Indigenous folk traditions worldwide.
Prince founded The Culture Keepers Circle as a call to action to bring together artists, activists, policy experts, communities, and neighbors with one shared goal: to make sure our stories are never erased and our cultural resources are never taken again.