The Indigenous Earth Sciences Project (IESP) was founded in 1998 with the mission of increasing the participation of Native Americans in the earth sciences at all educational and professional levels. The primary goal of the IESP is to build the scientific self-sufficiency of Native American, reservation-based communities. Most of the project’s activities seek to build the recruitment and retention pipelines for American Indian students though which they can best obtain geoscientific expertise while honoring and empowering their culture, traditions, and indigenous knowledge.