the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability

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

Standing in his laboratory, Harvard professor Sean Eddy gazes at a row of vacant work stations. More than a year ago, this lab was filled with over a dozen researchers. On a given day they might be working independently on analyzing genomic sequencing or gathered around the group table, drinking coffee and helping each other troubleshoot questions about genomic data from different species.

Now, after his funding was terminated under the Trump administration, the computer screens are gone and the room is silent. He's one of the last people left.

So what's going on with so many people on my most recent poll about if Black characters are harder to draw going "No, BUT, hair-"

Textured hair is not that difficult to draw and if you feel like its something that's uniquely more difficult than straight hair textures you really just need more practice because i promise you, its not that difficult.

I'm going to ask people to stop spreading the idea that all black people disappeared from Argentina because "we killed them all". Is Argentina racist? Of course it is. But leaving aside the African and Afro-descendant population of recent migrations (20th century), the problem with the Afro-descendant population in Argentina is that it's still incredibly invisibilized, especially the one with roots going back to colonial times.

1) Any Argentine will have heard of the "crisol de razas", ("melting pot"), the metaphor linked to the supposed "homogeneous" integration of the entire foreign population that arrived in the country during the era of the great waves of immigration (1890-1920). This concept, in addition to establishing a false equivalence between "nationality" and "race", always left out the Afro-descendant and indigenous population, not because they didn't exist but because there was a need to create the myth of a "white Argentina".

2) There are other sources of invisibilization:

a) At the end of the 18th century, the Spanish monarchy approved a Real cédula called "gracias al sacar" which established "monetary compensation" (a payment, so to speak) so that freed black people could acquire the status of "white" and thus access some of the privileges and benefits that this position entailed (it's important to note that in colonial times, at least here, "white", "black" or "indian" were legal categories rather than racial).

b) During most of the 20th century, the DNI (Documento Nacional de Identidad, "National Identity Card") included a description of the physical traits of individuals, one of which was skin color. One such color was "trigueño", a category difficult to describe accurately because it was used very broadly to describe people who were "brown" or "morenos", neither black nor white. As Miriam Gomes (activist and literature professor) mentions (in Spanish), many black people were pigeonholed in this category (in Spanish, see min. 21:40), which contributed to their invisibilization. Imagine that this category was so broad that even my own paternal grandmother, who has Mapuche (but not black) ancestry, was also labeled as "trigueña".

3) According to the 2022 Census, the population that recognizes itself as Afro-descendant or has black or African ancestors totals 302,936 people in the national territory. This population group constitutes 0.7% of the total number of people living in private homes, while in the 2010 Census it represented 0.4%. [[I must remember that we should take into account the possibility that for whatever reason there are people who don't know or don't identify themselves as Afro-descendants even though they are]]. The third graph of the linked document shows that most of the Afro-descendant population in Argentina is located in those provinces/jurisdictions that concentrated the black population (either enslaved or free) during the colonial period (i.e. Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Santa Fe and the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires). Unfortunately, this graph doesn't provide information on the migratory origin of this population, but according to the data I risk establishing a certain continuity with the colonial period.

Our goverment has illegally sold many of our water, riverbanks and burnt acres and acres of native land. The buyers are US and Israel.

I've seen people (Afroargentinians, indigenous argentinians, brown argentinians, white argentinians, mestizo, hell even asian argentinians) explaining and recontextualizing and trying and trying. I have seen people who are not even arguing anything get swarmed by hateful comments for using the Argentinian shirt, even worse if they're foreigners who have embraced our country. I have seen these comments telling them "argentinians want you dead, argentinians would turn on you".

They hide behind "you all think like your goverment". They refuse to listen to any nuance on the region. They quote examples of racism and anti-indigenous in Argentina without context, without understanding this shit hurts argentinians first. Brown argentinians are the first victims of argentinian racism.

In this foreign narrative, they don't exist. We don't exist as people, we're a concept. The nazi country. The shithole.

While all of this is happening, Milei is trying to pass a law that allows foreign companies to acquire largue quantities of land. Israeli companies and diplomats are circling us like vultures. The US and Europe are getting for cheap local scientific advancements worth millions.