Thanks for Paying Rent

If Hallmark had a “Thanks for helping us raise and distribute over $113,000 to Indigenous community members in 2025” card, it would be on its way to you right now. Unfortunately, since no such card exists, a shout out in this newsletter will have to do. Thank you so much for all the support you’ve shown to Nii’kinaaganaa and the folx we serve; it has made a tremendous difference in the lives of hundreds of Indigenous community members across so-called Canada by allowing them to:

-eat (in general, but also to access traditional/cultural/country food)
-maintain or secure stable housing with money going towards rent
-pay overdue bills
-deepen connection to cultural practices with supports provided by the foundation
-get around (attend funerals, retrieve personal belongings from storage, access mobility aids)
-get support after being displaced by wildfires
-access traditional healing spaces and medicines
-access education initiatives that champion the original laws, customs, and traditions of First Nations people
-welcome their children into the world with baby baskets

While this may give you the warm fuzzies, it’s important to understand that the support we redistribute to the original peoples of the land is not a gift, charity, or an absolution—it's the rent that needs to be paid by settlers who have benefitted, both historically and currently, from centuries of Indigenous dispossession. There’s a striking juxtaposition in an Arthur Manuel quote from The Reconciliation Manifesto that’s relevant here: “If you want to measure the effect of Canada‘s racist and colonial policies toward Indigenous peoples, you only have to look at the fact that while Canada was recently number one in the international quality of life indicator, Indigenous peoples within its borders languished at number 78.” 

What we do with your money is inextricably bound up in why it’s needed in the first place. That’s why we consider Nii’kinaaganaa a mutual aid foundation—because, in the words of Dean Spade, “mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.” [Emphasis my own.] And that why isn’t just colonialism; it’s racial capitalism, neoliberalism, fascism, individualism, imperialism, government-sanctioned ableism, the work- and life-robbing horrors of AI, the cowardice of our leaders in the face of committing to meaningful climate policy, and a bunnnch of other things.

I’m going to stop myself before I get lost in the “here’s what’s wrong with the world” sauce—but first, a favour. The next time you find yourself in a moment of thankful reflection on what you have in your life, think about what we have to do (or keep doing) to address and dismantle the imbalanced colonial structures that gave us all those things in the first place. If we as settlers have the ability to lift up the marginalized, it has likely come at their expense, and so we have the responsibility to do exactly that. And as the political and ruling class continues to shift towards the right and away from human rights, we anticipate a much higher demand for support this year. So please tell your friends and your networks about Nii’kinaaganaa (or join or start your own mutual aid group!). The further our reach, the less support requests we have to turn down and the stronger we can build our communities.

I suppose what we really want to thank you for is your moral fortitude. You would think fighting these systems of oppression that would have us cause our own extinction before stopping to question the perversion of their capitalistic death drives would be a no-brainer. But at a moment steeped in uncertainty, fear, hateful propaganda, criminalized dissent, manufactured scarcity, and murderous othering, it’s unfortunately become more like an act of courage—a rejection of what could happen to those who stand against the harm that has both created the status quo and maintains its racist power structures. One day I hope that that changes. One day I hope we don’t have to thank people for doing the right thing because it will have become as instinctual as breathing. Until then, we’ll say thank you once more.

WAYS TO PAY
-Become a monthly plan member through our Ghost site
-Make a one time donation through Ghost
-Paypal or e-transfer us at Niikinaaganaa@gmail.com 
-Become a Patreon member

Thanks for reading and supporting,
The Nii’kinaaganaa Team

"Our poverty is both the symptom of our oppression and a tool that is used to prolong it."
-Arthur Manuel, The Reconciliation Manifesto