Help us keep our native heirlooms

I am setting up this fundraiser to raise money in order to pay for my father’s storage units that contain all of our family’s indigenous heirlooms. My grandfather’s regalia, my grandmother’s hand woven baskets and many more items are in the units. My father has been living out of his car for the past two years, being unable to work due to a workman’s comp case, which is why these items are currently in storage. The storage unit that contains most of these items is in lien I am unable to document such items in photographs. Since we are behind in payments we are at risk of losing the storage units, and that means we could lose all of our cultural heirlooms and memorabilia. It would crush not only me but my father to lose any of these items. He has called me multiple times in tears worrying about losing the units since we have at least four generations worth of heritage sitting in there. If we can’t secure enough money for the units, they will be sold off and I doubt I will be able to find my family’s items ever again.

Due to an accident in January 2020 my father has been out of work and on workman’s comp for the past two years, due to his previous company failing to get him a much needed surgery for his thumb. He was able to get surgery done on his shoulder but the company has completely ignored his requests for his thumb leading to him being permanently disabled. They have stopped providing him with the financial support he has been living off of, so we have no means to pay our bills until I can secure a job. I have already applied to multiple places and I am waiting for a response. One of the jobs I applied to looks promising, and I should be able to support my father and all of his bills from there.

Our plan is to move one storage unit into the other, so that we only have to deal with two instead of three. (One of the storage units is in another state, so we can’t do anything about that one until later.) In order to do that, the storage units need to be paid in full since the management won’t allow us access to the units if they’re only paid in half. I also have to pay half of one of the units before the end of the month and secure the payment for our phone bill so we can get together to move the units. Because two of the units prices have gone up in the past year, we have been paying the units in half every two weeks so that my father had enough to eat and get gas. These are considered delinquent payments and have a hefty late fee attached, which is also why the unit is considered in lien.

In total I need $1,550 by the end of March but I need $465 by the end of this month to pay for the half the unit and our phone bill.

Here’s the total breakdown:

Half of the unit in lien: $245

Phone bill for this month: $220

Unit 1 (March): $399

Unit 2 (March): $350

Unit 3 (March): $255

Car insurance: $45

Truly the heirlooms in that unit are priceless to me and my family, and I’ve been tossing and turning for the past week thinking about some random person getting their hands on our unit and destroying or selling off our entire history. I want to be able to alleviate the worry from my dad, and make sure that this won’t happen again. It saddens me that we have to leave them in a unit at all, but I’m hoping that soon we’ll have a house to put them into.