Methow Conservancy "Care for the Land" scholarships for Class of 2025

This opportunity is for Class of 2025 graduating high school seniors in the Methow Valley and Okanogan regions.

A) Methow Valley

One $1000 scholarship will be awarded to a student within the Methow Valley School District boundaries. Students must be admitted to a 2-year or 4-year college or university or a trade/technical school in order to be eligible.

B) Native Student

One $1000 scholarship will be awarded to a student who is a Native student graduating from high school in Brewster, Lake Roosevelt, Mansfield, the Methow Valley, Okanogan, Omak, Oroville, Pateros, or Tonasket. Students must be admitted to a 2-year or 4-year college or university or a trade/technical school in order to be eligible.

Immediate family members of Methow Conservancy Board, Staff, and Advisory Council are ineligible unless there are no other eligible applicants.

Deadline: April 7, 2025

Questions? Email Ashley@MethowConservancy.org or call 509.996.5033

Fillable Application HERE.

Print-and-Write Application HERE.

Email your completed application: Ashley Lodato, Associate Director. Ashley@MethowConservancy.org

You can also mail your application to: Methow Conservancy, PO Box 71, Winthrop, WA 98862 but it must arrive by April 7, 2025.

Optional: Applicants are invited to submit a brief personal video introduction (no more than 2 minutes) as an additional component of your application. The video introduction gives you an opportunity to tell us more about yourself, in your voice, beyond the information you provided in your application. You may either upload a video to a Google folder (or other shareable platform of your choice) and grant access to ashley@methowconservancy.org or email Ashley to request a link to upload. Again, this is optional, and is not an alternative to the essay question in the application.

Read about our previous "Care for the Land" scholarship winners HERE.

Since Time Immemorial

13,000 years ago the last of the Missoula floods swept across Eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge. Glaciologists estimate that the glaciers in the Methow Valley were up to a mile deep. The First People of the Methow Valley have stories about the great flood and its impacts.

For hundreds of generations, the Methow Valley has been the home of the mətx̌ʷu/Methow People. When the first white settlers arrived in the Methow Valley in the late 1800s, most of the mətx̌ʷu/Methow People were forcibly relocated from the Moses-Columbia Reservation, formed in 1879. In 1884, the Moses-Columbia Reservation was dissolved and most of the Methow People were moved to the area east and south of present-day Omak, becoming one of the twelve tribes of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

Others in this diaspora refused to enter the reservations and simply stayed or dispersed in the region. Even today, many Methow Tribal families maintain a consistent presence in this valley. We are grateful for the mətx̌ʷu/Methow People’s careful stewarding of this land and hope to learn from their example.

Learn more about the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the mətx̌ʷu/Methow People here.