By Anjanette Wilson | Associate Director, Donor Relations
Dear Friends of Seeding Sovereignty,
We are beyond grateful for our loving community of supporters like you and we are inspired everyday by your solidarity over these past few months. Together we did SO much for the community!
This past winter we leaned on your support more than ever and you were there for us. Pine Ridge Reservation was hammered by yet another snow blizzard. Winter Storm Diaz covered the reservation in more than 30 inches of snow with wind chills reaching -50F. Thousands of our kin were trapped on Pine Ridge and many were forced to burn clothes for warmth during the storm because they had no electricity. Roads were cut off and resources were hard to come by.
One family was trapped inside their home for four days leading them to run out of baby formula. They were forced to walk 8 miles to get help because their baby was starving. Our kin on Pine Ridge Reservation needed support, and our community of supporters came together to help.
We partnered with a local organization, the Red Road Institute for their winter outreach program to help provide aid to the Pine Ridge community during these trying times. Red Road Institute called for $20,000 to complete their project which included blankets, heaters, and winterizing windows and together we made it happen.
With a strong community spirit, the Red Road Institute facilitated the first Wopila Giveaway mutual aid distribution, a massive care package that included 20 packages of baby/infant formula, 150 blankets, and 114 heaters, provided on February 7th and on March 1st. Our community of dedicated supporters like you has helped provide families with rapid response care they need, when they need it.
We would like to take a moment to say THANK YOU.
Your support has been critical in ensuring the safety and well-being of these families–and frankly, your solidarity is still very much needed. As we clear some of the harshest throws of this deep winter and look toward a bright spring, it is time to further build out sense of community.
Here’s where you come in: We hope to host monthly skate events and continue to support our Indigenous youth within the community. Monthly support from our community helps us sustain our work by providing essential, life-saving support that invests in young people, supports Indigenous youth leadership, and celebrates artistic abilities and the full expression of our LGBTQIA2S+ community. Our Medicine Wheels program wants to help shatter the feeling of isolation we experienced during the COVID lockdowns by providing an outlet for our youth on Pine Ridge – an outlet that can help our young ones turn away from substance abuse and lean on one another.
Reliable supporters like you ensure we can continue our advocacy for Indigenous youth empowerment and continue making safe spaces that allow all Native youth to feel accepted and honored.
“This winter has been one of Pine Ridge's harshest winters in a long time. On top of the extreme winter, we are just now coming out of COVID lockdown protocols. With both of these uncontrollable events, there has been an extreme amount of isolation. Through Medicine Wheels, so far this year, we have warmed up Pine Ridge with blankets and heaters, but we cannot wait to bring back a sense of community to our youth with our Medicine Wheels events. We cannot wait to see our youth come together for the first time in a long time. Thank you for being so supportive in bringing the Medicine Wheels program to Pine Ridge.” - Hope Flournoy, Medicine Wheels Coordinator
At the beginning of the year, your generous gifts helped us give eight skateboards to the children’s foster home on Pine Ridge Reservation. The children were thrilled to have their own skateboards and the kids were so excited saying, “is this really ours?”, “do we get to keep them?”, and “can we take them home with us?
We cannot thank you enough for your critical support and the kids cannot wait to take their skateboards to the next Medicine Wheels skate event!
We are so excited to announce that Medicine Wheels joined hands with our partners at Ground Control, another sister organization, and hosted our first inaugural Skate Bash earlier last week! We had nine youth skaters join us for some skating and creative art activities!
Our next event will be our first Community Skate event on March 26th! (For more details about our upcoming events, sign up for our newsletter The Collective!)
These events are the first of the new year, and the kids are excited to start community skating! We want to show up BIG for these kiddos but we need you with us. Right now, will you chip in and help support Medicine Wheels by buying food for our first community skating event OR by buying art supplies for our community banner that the kids will all contribute to making?
Any and all contributions are appreciated and heartfelt–but here’s another way we could use your support; please, help us spread the word! Sharing our projects with your network goes a long way, and more amplification of our work means more of our Indigenous communities can get the support they need.
We couldn’t be more grateful for your support, thank you for helping us reimagine what healing means to our kin. Wheeling is Healing!
In the kinship,
The Team at Seeding Sovereignty
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