Pride, pickles, and portapotties

At the end of June, Sylvia wrote that this month was Pride and they were able to share resources with several people. A guest in her home is non binary and has parents who aren’t sure how to support them, so she was able to send them home with books including fiction with a non-binary main character. Representation matters :) Another family also received books to open conversations and avoid prejudices in the conversations that needed to be had. They would like to start a parent support group, it was in the early stages when the pandemic closed things down but are hopeful they will be able to get this started in the fall and share the resources that they collect each month thanks to the generosity of Nii’kinaaganaa.

Kids eat first writes that it is privileged to have such a generous donors. We want to say Yaw^ko, che-miigwetch, tansi, and thank you for your support. This month they purchased groceries for two families with the funds provided. Four adults and six children can eat a lot!

Rachel Snow continues to provide education and conversation in the Tipi Talks series of conversations and one of the things that we help pay for is the portapotties that are needed when you invite people into a rural area!

All those pickles you see in the collage? That’s the work of Medsin cup who have been doing a lot of gardening activites, plant identification, and watching medicine growth along with teaching how to can pickles and distributing the results. These activities provide opportunities for teaching and sharing so much more than what is immediately apparent.

The Freedom March took place in Mi’kmaki and the Mawikuti’k Society was busy organizing and running that event. You can see the Mi’kmaq flag along with the faces of many participants. They are focused on supporting survivors of Indian Residential Schools and day-schools, educating the community, and supporting the youth.

Once again, the support from Nii’kinaagaa funded the weekly country food offering at Resilience Montreal. Each week their lead intervention worker Maggie spends the morning preparing salmon, mussels, arctic char, and shrimp. They offer it in their courtyard in the afternoon to clients and it is a great community event. It sounds like a simple thing, but for people who are living a long way from home as the Inuit in Montreal are doing, gathering together over familiar meals is so important.

We have also started to support The Sunday Brunch club, a collective in Calgary who monitor police interactions, collect data on police conduct, and provide alternatives to police intervention. They formed through the need for accountability from authority and a lack of safety in the streets.

Through your generous support we are able to turn around and provide funds to what you can see is a wide range of community building projects as well as meeting individuals material needs. It has been a challenge to get money to individuals in effective ways, and so we are beginning a pilot in August. Many of you know our board member Terrill Tailfeathers on Twitter where he uses his platform to promote people who are crowdfunding for various things, but you may not know that he is active in his community checking on people and doing what he can to connect them with supports. Beginning in August we will be funding him to provide that financial support in his community. As we work the kinks out of that system we can build relationships with organizers to do this in other communities too.

Everything goes slower in the summer, but the swag is coming! We’ll have stickers and buttons, tote bags and t shirts that you can buy within a month or two as well as items that will be given away in thanks for your support. We’re putting out a call for artists for land back designs as well, much of which will be available for download so you can make your own stickers, buttons, tote bags and t shirts.

Thankyou so much for your support! Whether it is ongoing (which allows us to budget and plan) or a one time donations (which goes towards special projects) we appreciate you so much. One additional way that you can support us is to spread the word. Through Ko-fi we can now accept donations via credit card through Stripe and if your business, union local, or other organization would like to donate directly to us they can e-transfer niikinaaganaa@gmail.com or contact us for direct deposit information.

So many thanks!!! By building our communities, we are changing the world.