Coeur d'Alene Tribal Member Joseph Brown (left) and Penobscot Nation Member Apemesim Galipeau (right) are the new awardees of the Kurt Grinnell Aquaculture Scholarship 2025.
Photo: Kurt Grinnell Aquaculture Scholarship Foundation.
The Kurt Grinnell Aquaculture Scholarship Foundation (KGASF) recently announced the names of its new recipients. They are Coeur d'Alene Tribal Member, Joseph Brown, and Penobscot Nation Member, Apemesim Galipeau.
KGASF provides financial assistance to Tribal and First Nations students pursuing careers in aquaculture and natural resources. Brown and Galipeau are the third and fourth 2025 awardees, or the sixth and seventh when considering the entire 2024/2025 academic year.
Joseph - Joe - Brown is the first of the new scholarship recipients announced. After a decade operating heavy machines in the construction industry, he decided to continue his formal education and is currently pursuing an associate arts degree in fisheries and wildlife at Washington state-based Spokane Community College.
Commenting on the reasons that led the Scholarship Selection Committee to select him, KGASF Executive Director John Dentler noted that his recommendations reflect that he is an impressive young man dedicated to his family, his community, and his Tribe.
"Joe has all the qualifications we look for in a candidate, including a dream of working closely with the Coeur d'Alene Tribe's natural resource programs," Dentler said. "We are so pleased to see Tribal Members like Joe planning to contribute to Tribal management and utilization of natural resources," the KGASF Executive Director added.
About the second awardee, Apemesim Galipeau, the Kurt Grinnell Aquaculture Scholarship Foundation noted that after working with Penobscot Nation youth for six years, he enrolled in the Ecology and Environmental Studies program at the University of Maine at Orono, with plans to work for the Penobscot Nation in natural resources.
In that previous work with youth, he had done a variety of tasks, from coaching competitive canoeing to tutoring students after school to engaging in planning and outreach to improve the health of Tribal Members.
"Apemesim embodies Kurt Grinnell's commitment to youth, and his recommendations reflect that he is both eager to learn and highly motivated," KGASF Executive Director John Dentler said about him
"We are so pleased to see students such as Joe and Apemesim pursue an education in natural resources. They, like previous scholarship recipients, are committed to the long-term welfare of their Tribe's and Nation's natural resources. My father would have been so proud of them," said, for her part, Jaiden Grinnell Bosick, KGASF Board Chair, head of the Scholarship Selection Committee, and also one of two daughters of the late Kurt Grinnell.
After his passing away the previous year, the non-profit organization bearing his name was created in 2022 to carry on his legacy. A Native American leader of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe of Washington State, Kurt Grinnell was a strong advocate for Tribal food security and sovereignty, recognizing that aquaculture - whether shellfish, finfish, or plants such as algae - could be a solution to both Tribal food security and Indigenous reconciliation and wellbeing.
As mentioned above, Brown and Galipeau are the sixth and seventh scholarship award recipients for the 2024/2025 academic year. Before them, KGASF had announced four new scholarships in early February. On that date it renewed the scholarships of Allison Carl of the Chugach Alaska Corporation and Native Village of Eyak, Alaska, and Alana Schofield, a native of the Keweenaw Bay Indian community in Michigan; and it also awarded new scholarships to Gwendolyn Aaberg, a member of the Nondalton Tribe in Alaska, Jaycee Williford a member of the Chickasaw Tribe in Washington.
Currently, scholarships are awarded throughout the year, provided a good candidate comes forward, so the announcement of the fifth recipient of the Kurt Grinnell Aquaculture Scholarship Foundation – the first of 2025 - was announced only two weeks later, in mid-February, when we learned it was Ilene Goudy, a member of the Yakama Nation, also from Washington.
