We Move With the Lightness of Being
And we will go where there's a place for us
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I know what you’re thinking: three posts in one week?! Unprecedented! And … isn’t that a bit much? Well, yes and yes and especially yes. But these are special circumstances. All will be revealed in the unfolding….
Today, my friends, April 4th, is my birthday!
I survived – even thrived! – another year around the Sun and, for all of the hardships of the world, and the ups and downs that a year can bring, it’s personally been a good one. I am grateful to everyone here who supports me in these efforts because I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do all the things I’m doing in my life right now without it. Truly. Chi-miigwech to each and every one of you.
That doesn’t mean I’m not above asking for more, though….
Many of you will recall my post a few weeks ago announcing my fundraising efforts to provide free scholarships to at least two, and hopefully more, Indigenous folks to attend the workshop I am facilitating on the Main Salmon River in June for the Freeflow Institute. You may revisit that post HERE. A little more succinct breakdown of what I am aiming for may be read HERE.
What I am asking you again today to consider is donating to this effort and if it feels better thinking of it as a birthday gift to me, I’ll love it that much more.
Donations have been coming in and I’m very, very pleased with the response. So many of you are so generous and I’m deeply grateful.
Yet I still think we can do better.
If you recall, here is what I am contributing:
I am matching donations up to $1750 (half of one scholarship). This is roughly what I get paid to do an event like this so I’ll be doing it for nothing which I feel is entirely appropriate and necessary.
I am donating 50% of all new yearly paid subscriptions (that’s $25 on the $50 option) through April. So if you’ve been thinking of subscribing, now’s the time.
I am donating $10 for every preorder of Becoming Little Shell via Fact & Fiction from now through April as well. HERE is where you can get on that.
In addition, I’ve got a whirlwind of activity scheduled all over Montana in the month of April. So I’ve decided to up the ante even more as follows:
I will donate 25% of all of my honorariums for all these activities. I haven’t done the math, but taking a quick look that should account for another $500 or so.
Outside of those other honorariums, I am doing a speaking engagement for Carroll College in Helena on April 25th. It’s open to the public too. Anyway, I’m going to donate my entire honorarium of $1000 to this fundraising effort, because if there is any organization on the planet who should be funding opportunities for Indigenous people – since they are hugely responsible for taking them away in the first place – it’s the institution of Christianity.
What can you do to help?
Any little bit helps if you DONATE through Chickadee Community Services, my dedicated partner in this effort. If half the people who allegedly read this newsletter donated a mere $5, we’d damn near fill all twelve seats for this trip. It’s that simple!
I get asked all the time, “What can I do to help?” THIS is it. Native folks, and other marginalized communities, lack opportunity. This is an opportunity to participate in something meaningful. But it’s not much of an opportunity if one is the only Native invited to such an event. Then it feels like a token, or a box check, and it’s uncomfortable. I know this as well as anybody. That’s why I want to sponsor at least two people, and hopefully more. Several more.
Don’t forget the other stuff I mentioned like preordering Becoming Little Shell, or subscribing to this newsletter. Doing it that way helps the donation effort and also helps me finance my contributions too. It’s not like I have a bunch of money available to throw around, this is just really important to me.
We will raise scholarship money through April. We’ll see where we are then, then open those seats up for submissions. We’ll figure out that step when we get there; it will likely be as high tech and complicated as drawing names out of a hat or something similar. The last thing I want to do, as so often happens in situations like this, is force people to make a case (i.e. grovel) for why they are better qualified than anyone else.
I’ll be mentioning this effort again throughout the month, probably to the point of tedium. I’ve been thinking about writing a newsletter as an open letter to folks in conservation, outfitters, fishing guides, et al, because their opportunities to make a living is on the backs of people who lost everything. The efforts to preserve “public land” is also an effort to (continue to) keep it out of the hands of Indigenous people too. I think there are movements afoot in some places to reconcile all of that but there aren’t enough of them. I’m not making judgments I’m just reminding everyone that these are facts of modern life that must be reconciled: every penny of wealth on this continent is at the expense of Indigenous people. Period.
But I don’t want to get all wrapped around the axle thinking about it today, I’m just asking for your help.
Whatever you can do – and especially to those of you who already have – I am expressing deep, deep gratitude.
Happy birthday Chris! We are birthday twins and I too am celebrating another revolution on this beautiful rock.
Mashkode biishiki!
Happy Birthday, Chris. Have renewed my subscription for another year. Trying to remember how I discovered your Substack several years ago. I've determined that I can only afford one paid Substack subscription per year. I'm choosing An Irritable Metis from here on out.