NACOP RECITATION

Welcome to the Native American Community Organizing Project, NACOP.

We are a grass-roots, community advocacy organization that seeks to improve the health and welfare of Native Americans throughout Arizona. In pursuing this goal, we cultivate and train leaders within the Native American community to effectively advocate on behalf of Native people.

Our organization was first formed in 1998 after a series of meetings among Arizona Native leaders and organizations identified the pressing need for formal Native American advocacy within the federal, state, and local political arenas.

At these meetings, which culminated in the 1998 Urban Indian Summit, representatives of various Native American service providers, cultural and spiritual preservation groups, and health-care and education advocates collectively called for the creation of an organization to specifically improve Native American representation in the political process.

Furthermore, special needs associated with off-reservation Native communities were identified, and the need for additional representation for off-reservation Indians, or Urban Indians, was recognized.

It is with these charges and calls to action from the community that NACOP was created.

NACOP is a non-partisan, not-for-profit group that serves the Urban Indian community as well as the general Native American community of Arizona. Our organizers and volunteers work within the Native community to assess needs relating to health care, education, political participation, cultural preservation, and legal representation. In turn, NACOP works with various elected officials, governmental offices, and private organizations to effectively meet these needs.

We seek to preserve respect for Native cultures in not only our work, but also our actions. Our meetings are designed to organize and take action based on consensus. No one person’s opinion or agenda is more important that the group’s. Instead, through cooperation and communication, we seek to work as an efficient unit.

In addition to being an efficient whole, NACOP also seeks to provide each of its members with the training and education necessary so that that each of us may be spokespeople for the community.

Thank you for your interest. May we be of one mind and one spirit to work for the common good.