Every Donation Counts

To Our Considerate Benefactors:

What a year we have all had. I hope you and yours have come out safe and sound. We in the Yurok Tribal Court this last year have worked hard, continued to struggle, and worked to maintain our responsibilities to the ancestors, the children, and relatives of our world who rightly expect us to care for them. That responsibility is expansive, and we have reached out more to our neighbors to assist them as well as share our knowledge in the hopes of protecting everything in the world we all must share. 

I wanted to let you know what you helped us accomplish this last year.  As I have mentioned to many of you, we at the Yurok Tribal Court are over 90% grant funded, and in recent years we have raised a lot of funding for our Wellness focused justice system.  However, gaps of need have continued to require us to reach out for help, and I expect that to remain true in the immediate future. I would like to detail a few accomplishments that were helped by gifts from those who see our need and share our belief in “sharing”. 

First, we now have two reentry homes, one for our men and one for our women who need to work on themselves as they seek to return to our/their community/families in a good way. We are not a rights based culture rather a responsibilities based culture that requires a certain base of behavior and the righting of wrongs. The “trickledown” impact of historical trauma has resulted in behavior that is not suitable in such a context and we help them return to harmony. Often the supplies for such residences/residents must be paid for from non-grant funding, including food, house computers, clothing, furnishing, transportation, etc.

Second, the community based funding has supported educational advancement, we have our first law school graduate with another student currently attending; a staff member first graduated from high school and then from the police academy; we supported the enrollment of a staff member in junior college, with another set to begin in January 2021. You helped pay for tuition, rent, tutor, bar exam materials and books. 

Third, we have wide-ranging Wellness activities involving youth, veterans, returning treatment program graduates, returning inmates, victims of crime and/or poverty issues.  We have used funding for books, food, personal hygiene, and purchasing cultural supplies (smokers for fish/deer meat, net making materials, basket making/regalia making materials etc.)

The Court has a non-profit corporation Kee Cha E Nar to allow your deduction to be tax deductible, you may choose a specific project or allow the Chief Judge to allocate to a specific fund as you see fit. 

Specific projects we are looking to fund include:

1)    Wellness funding for our Veterans, reentry clients, youth and wellness court clients

2)    Education assistance for our law school students and general support for continued education for court staff

3)    Book Nook funding to purchase books for children and general native themed books, which may be given away or sold. 

Funds not allocated by the giver will be assigned to categories needing funding.

In closing, please take care and I appreciate your consideration of our request….

Abby Abinanti

Chief Judge 

Yurok Tribal Court