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donate your bugs to this little man so he can eat them

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food

Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) family Mimidae, order Passeriformes.

Virginia Wildlife; vol. 32, no. 6. June, 1971. Illustration by John W. Taylor.

A diagram comparing a human hand to the equivalent limb in other mammals from Henry Fairfield Osborn's The age of mammals in Europe, Asia and North America (1910).

Gorgonavis alcyone was an enantiornithean bird that lived in what is now Spain during the early Cretaceous, about 129-126 million years ago.

Enantiornitheans were a diverse and abundant group of Mesozoic birds that retained claws on their wings and often had toothy snouts instead of beaks, and many also had ribbon-like display feathers on their tails instead of lift-generating fans. While they externally looked a lot like modern birds they weren't ancestral to any living forms — instead they represented a separate "cousin" lineage to euornitheans that convergently evolved similar features and lifestyles.

Although known only from an isolated skull, Gorgonavis would probably have been around 14cm long (~5.5") with an estimated wingspan of 30cm (~12"). It seems to have been a close relative of long-snouted enantiornitheans like Longipteryx, having similar elongated jaws with teeth only at the tips. 

If it was a longipterygid it would be the oldest known member of that group and the only one currently known outside of China, suggesting that particular family was much more widespread than previously thought.

Longipterygids were traditionally interpreted as kingfisher-like birds specialized to prey on insects or fish, but two specimens from China with preserved gut contents recently demonstrated that they may actually have been frugivores feeding on the fleshy fruit-like seeds of gymnosperm plants.

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