Songbirds Indigenous Land-care support

Tansi! My Name is Songbird (They/Them), I am an Indigiqueer and two-spirited Nehiyaw, and a carrier of a number of grandmother and grandfather teachings. 

Nanatawihowin means to remedy and to heal, to mend and to care to. I wanted to lead by sharing a Nehiyawewin word, a teaching, and a good introduction to my work;

As many of you know I do a lot of work on the land taking care of indigenous plant life! It first began as a way to help fend off the homesickness I was feeling. When I lived in Alberta I would gather plants for Elder's who couldn't harvest for themselves; both medicines and teas. I also helped tend to trees by pruning and gathering deadwood for sacred fires, collecting trash along the Saskatchewan river and keeping count and track of the beavers so I knew where to not harvest wood or bark. While I've been on the island for the last year and a half I've helped restore wild mint and thistle to wetland meadows in lake Thetis park and around the city of Victoria, I've tended to oak groves and Sitka/pine copses by pruning and feeding their roots tea. I've also spent a lot of time removing invasive species like Himalayan blackberry and English holly while also helping those areas recover with constant checkups and the planting of Indigenous species in their place. I also do ceremonies such as sacred-fires, healing circles and medicine wheel teachings; I have built medicine circles, I make mussel-shell rattles as gifts when I get the chance to visit a good healthy beach, and I also carry a medicine song that I had created during meditation! I spend hours on the land and I have covered a lot of ground and most of my work goes unnoticed or unappreciated, but with extra hands and extra money I can also do bigger projects. I can start propagating cedar and weeping willows for planting in areas I've already tended too and prepared for replanting. I can build sacred gardens around the island as a way to help create spaces for ceremony, meditation, and planting and the care for sacred medicines and endangered plants.  

A lot of this work is personal me time and as a Two-Spirit of the Niheyawewin nation it is my duty and responsibility to tend to the land and its needs while also helping providing for the community. It is time I commit to mediation, thoughtfulness, and mindfulness. It is a time where I prep for ceremony and where I sit to be with teachings that have been shared with me so I can find deeper understandings in them, such is tradition.

However, I do unfortunately live under a capitalist and colonial system and do need to financially support myself! I was advised to create a GoFundMe so that I can access greater support from the community and also promote the work that I do! In supporting me I will have the means to be better equipped to be on the land; money that can be used to buy tools, a new work bag, working clothes, and hopefully to fund other creative projects in the future! I was thinking of creating come sort of media space (a podcast, maybe a YouTube channel, or even a video series) where I could share my work and some teachings I've had the honor of carrying , such as; how I go about preparing spaces for invasive species pull, how to harvest berry seeds, and my own personalized mediations and ceremonies. 

In this time of stress and anxiety around our global climate crisis it is important to remember to support your local indigenous land-keepers and land-defenders, not only just me but all of us, and the best way that you can do it is either by amplifying our work so that we can have more job opportunities in the future, or financial supporting us. Your money will be put to good use and will mean that I can both have the means for larger projects and to support myself financially as a fulltime student.

Remember to honor the lifetime commitments of our Indigenous knowledge keepers and braves who have been defending and caring for the land despite all the challenges and obstacles the Canadian government puts in our way. I want to be on the land and I want to help mend the mistakes of this colonial society in the ways I know how, with my hands in the soil and a bag full of freshly picked medicines, but it is not something I can do alone, at least not sustainably.

~For those of you who cannot offer financial help, you can also help me by sharing the work that I do and showing up to offer some helping hands. I also accept gifts of sweetgrass, coffee, tea, and tobacco! If you do want to join please come and be mindful and respectful. Remember that I am a visitor on these lands and that the work I do with the local nations takes priority over my own personal projects so if I am not in a space where I can advise you then I can redirect you to other knowledge keepers and Elder who will need your help. We can help remedy some of the damages of climate change but it can only be done by returning power and equipping the ORIGINAL care-takers of Turtle Island with the means necessary to combat your governments shortcomings. We have to abolish the myth that these lands were untampered wilderness! The abundance and health of these lands and these ecosystems exist only because of a relationship of reciprocity between Indigenous peoples and the living earth since the birth of our nations and even to those who proceeded us; since time immemorial and then some and ever onwards!~

We need to make changes, and they need to happen now, so please support me! I thank you for your generosity and your time.

HIY-HIY