don't die wondering

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

Yes, fuck those ugly ass cyber trucks but FUCK that Space Center.

Starship genuine danger to the people who live here. It's to the point many of the people here when they heard the explosion joked that it was probably another one of Elon's rockets.

This is a horrifying pattern we are becoming numb to, we hear about a planned test launch and brace ourselves for more debris.

Several of Musk's attempts at rockets, especially after the deregulation, have resulted in catastrophic explosions. Want the list? Here are a few!!

December 9th, 2020- Starship serial No. 8, or SN8. Exploded upon landing.

February 2, 2021- Starship SN9. Exploded upon landing.

March 3rd. 2021- Starship SN10. Landed in one piece. Fire at the skirt caused an explosion.

April 20, 2023- Starship. Exploded once more. Debris scattered in Port Isabell.

March 6, 2025- Flight 8. Spun out of control and exploded in a mass of fireballs. Planes had to be grounded due to the mass explosion and the debris are stills scattered in the ocean.

And now we have the most recent and the worse one yet.

June 18-19, 2025- Starship 36 during a GROUND test caused a mass explosion, the looming mushroom cloud causing locals in Cameron to believed they had been bombed.

The loser describes this it as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" instead of what they are: fiery failures locals have to deal with as a result.

Pretty much everyone locally knows Elon Musk and his negative impact on our home, people who have had the unfortunate curse to have worked with him and the center call it Cultish, 8 members of his staff who spoke out against his behavior and sexual harassment were all fired.

Its a well known fact he hates the people here, and he goes out of his way to find employees who are not from this area and move them down here.

Musk has tried to encourage even more white people to come down to South Texas and live in his "Starship City". An attempt to gentrify and push out local citizens.

Rebekah Hinojosa, a local Activist with Another Gulf Is Possible, even had her home unlawfully entered by police after an alleged graffiti on a mural he commisioned (which didn't even obscure the mural).

This article is a good read on everything Musk has done to South Texas

I am TIRED of this going unnoticed and unheard of the People of The Valley. I need you to stop laughing and start taking this seriously.

If you want to read more on all the insane shit this man has done to South Texas here are a few more Articles I would Recommend

this behavior is nothing new. the global south and everything in it - the people, the culture, our heritage - is seen as nothing more than a decoration or commodity to colonizers. i don't even need to bring up the koh i noor or the entire british museum; these examples are recent and egregious enough on their own.

I was inspired by the black-out poems made by @playing-with-colors and decided to apply it to the locked tomb series!

“I had time to run home and pack a bag and get to the beach where the boats were waiting,” said a member of Namaygoosisagagun First Nation (Collins). “We literally had minutes to get on the boats and flee before it took our town. “Once we left my house finally after packing what I could in a pack sack, the fire was right behind our place. We had to run to the beach and once we got there, it was only moments before the fire had jumped over the (train) track and was coming for us.”

it has since been confirmed that namaygoosisagagun first nation has completely burnt to the ground. if you would like to help the community navigate an ongoing crisis, i urge you to donate to the anishinabek nation 7th generation, a registered charity seeking to improve the lives of first nations people. donations are going directly to members of namaygoosisagagun first nation.

Masks are available at all NYPD precincts, and public library branches across the five boroughs, including all Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library locations

> ⚪ raven's lesson ⚫

a piece about being two-spirit and transgender.

i designed this piece to resemble a chest that is post-mastectomy top surgery, just like mine; raven's wings and torso represent pectoral muscles, and his legs and talons are double incision scars.

in tsimshian adaawx (true tellings, not folklore or myth) as well as some neighbouring nations, it's said that raven used to be white long ago. as is often the case for trans people, i made drastic changes to my presentation and body from what i was born/grew up with/pressured into; so i found meaning that raven once looked very different too. it's also an analogy for adaptation: the white half of raven represents the old ways, & the black, modern times - ntvs broadly have had to adapt our ways as colonization continues, & i think two-spirit people have a unique relationship with this; we try to find ourselves in our histories that are sometimes nearly totally erased, we move in & out of colonial genders & western LGBT identities as it suits us.

also, raven is very resourceful & transforms into other beings; likewise, we adapt & transform. hes also self-motivated - not even stealing the sun is off limits! we are also by necessity self-propelled, tenaciously chasing down treatment or making other transformations. even when we have to sneak under the noses of authority figures in our lives to do it.

this split between two also gets at my own experience - in english terms, i'm approximately nonbinary. i needed T & top surgery, but my transition was not to a man but a different "woman" gender. it's very painful for me that under colonial gender, i am flattened. i'm more comfortable than ever as this new kind of woman, but i had to accept that many will initially perceive me as a man, even if i'm rarely read as cis. it's like i'm inbetween two worlds - and my life is MILES better for not dealing with severe dysphoria now that i'm mostly done with my transition, don't get me wrong, but it hurts to not be seen for the wholeness of the role that i occupy.

link to the specific video from the screenshot above here:

it's part of their series "A People's History of Native America," playlist link here.

and while I'm here I'll plug some other channels because PBS does solid work. also, iirc they are (...were? I'm not actually sure what applies to them now that they've been defunded) legally required to include captions and they actually do that, so you won't run into auto-generated nonsense.

I haven't checked out PBS Documentaries yet, but they have some stuff tackling similar topics. (I am adding things to my watchlist as we speak.) channel link here.

PBS Terra doesn't pull punches on climate change. channel link here.

PBS Eons has some super cool videos on the history of life on Earth, channel here, and Storied does awesome work on linguistics and mythology, channel here.

aaand while we're talking about defunded USA public media that doesn't pull punches when critiquing our history and government, I am once again going to plug a couple NPR podcasts. Throughline does deep-dives on history, culture, laws, and so on (link here); I'm especially partial to their We the People miniseries, which covers our rights from the Amendments. Code Switch covers culture, focusing on race and minority groups, and has been doing some especially good coverage on what the Trump administration's fuckery means on a practical level (link here). (these aren't the only NPR podcasts that talk about this stuff, but they're the big ones afaik.)