a thimblesworth of milky moon

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

Above: three different species of lerp psyllid

These tiny, aphid-like creatures are commonly known as lerp psyllids or jumping plant lice. Their nymphs have specialized mouthparts that can extract the sap from certain plants, and the sugar is then excreted as a liquid that quickly crystalizes when it hits the air, allowing the nymphs to build intricate structures known as lerps.

Above: psyllid nymphs hiding beneath their lerps, likely Creiis corniculatus and Creiis costatus

As this article explains:

Lerps are basically pure starch with some proteins and fats. They are created by psyllids, which are tiny, sap-sucking insects. When psyllid nymphs imbibe tree sap, their gut absorbs the amino acids and nutrients, but they quickly excrete the water as honeydew and the sugar as lerps.

Above: the lerps of two different psyllids from genus Cardiaspina

Each species produces its own distinctive type of lerp. Some of these structures resemble clamshells, while others have a fuzzy, glassy, or basket-like appearance; most lerps measure roughly 1-5mm in diameter, but some have a wavy or tube-like shape that can extend to a length of more than 10mm.

Above: a pair of exposed psyllid nymphs

These structures provide the nymphs with some measure of protection from parasites, predators, and dehydration, but they can also attract some unwanted attention:

Unfortunately for psyllids, their homes taste sweet (containing more starch than cane sugar) and are a prized food of birds, mammals and opportunistic humans. The level of sweetness fluctuates depending on the season, the weather, and the species of psyllid.

Above: animals feeding on some sweet, delicious lerps

The nymphs themselves are tiny, and their bodies often have a flat, oblong shape that allows them to slide beneath their lerps more effectively. They spend all five stages of their nymphal development tucked beneath their lerps; if the structure is damaged, removed, or destroyed, the nymph immediately begins to construct a new one.

Above: genus Hyalinaspis and genus Cardiaspina

When the nymph finally reaches maturity, it sheds its exuvia (molted exoskeleton) and emerges from the lerp as an adult psyllid. The adults are winged insects that look like miniature cicadas, with their bodies typically measuring less than 5mm long (that's about 1/5th of an inch).

Most lerp-forming psyllids are native to Australia, but they also occur as an invasive species in many other parts of the world.

Above: nymphs of genus Glycaspis and Cardiaspina

Lerps have traditionally been incorporated into the beliefs and practices of Aboriginal cultures in Australia, which is home to more than 300 different species of lerp-producing psyllid:

Lerps feature in Aboriginal calendars, ceremonies, mythology, and cosmology, all of which have embedded biocultural knowledge about the time and place for optimal collection. These insects are central to Indigenous cultures, yet Western science knows surprisingly little about their taxonomy, biology, and ecology.

The term "lerp" actually comes from the indigenous word lerep, which means "sweet" in the Wemba-Wemba language of southeastern Australia.

Above: Eucalyptolyma maideni, also known as a spotted gum lerp psyllid, hiding beneath its fern-like lerp

Sources & More Info:

Land for Wildlife: Lerps: One of Nature's Sweet Offerings

Business Queensland: Psyllids and Lerps

Journal of Ethnobiology: Indigenous Use of Lerps in Australia: So Much More than a Sweet Treat

Aboriginal Peoples and Terrestrial Invertebrates in Australia: Lerp and Honeydew

iNaturalist: Subfamily Spondyliaspidinae

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16 July: Trinity atomic bomb test (1945), US foreshadows upcoming mass death at Hiroshima/Nagasaki and heralds age of fear and global imperial hegemony

17 July: the end of Tsar Nicholas/Romanov family (1918); RMS Carpathia (rescued Titanic six years earlier) sunk by German u-boat (1918, same day as Romanovs); Francisco Franco starts Spanish Civil War and leads outbreak of counterrevolutionary/fascist coup (1936), eventually culminating in decades of Falangist rule of Spain (lasting into the 1970s); Churchill, Truman, Stalin meet at Potsdam (1945, one day after Truman's people tested the bomb); Walt Disney opens Disneyland at Anaheim (1955), his first major theme park, heralding another kind of ascendant, decades-long cultural/corporate hegemony

18 July: Hitler publishes Mein Kampf (1925)

19 July: France declares war on Prussia and the Franco-Prussian War begins (1870), with France eventually surrendering six months later when Prussia invaded Paris, announced the throne of Kaiser Wilhelm and the unification of German states, and founded the German Empire, from which inter-imperial rivalries on the continent stoked European anxieties culminating in the First World War; Lakota leader Sitting Bull surrenders to US Army (1881) after being hunted in the aftermath of the Battle of Little Bighorn, signalling intensifying US suppression of Indigenous resistance (Sitting Bull was eventually killed by US police/Indian Agents on 15 December 1890, two weeks before the US Army killed 200-300 or more people at the Wounded Knee Massacre at nearby Pine Ridge on 29 December 1890, "closing the frontier" and signalling that the US had allegedly won "the Indian Wars" and conquered the continent)

Yakov Khomich, witness, 2024