Post by Okwes on Dec 24, 2005 16:26:44 GMT -5
Winter Solstice, December 21, 2005
Dear Friend of the Seventh Generation,
The Seventh Generation Fund is one of the oldest continually
operating people of color foundations in the United States. Our work is
directed to support grassroots empowerment and Native citizen action for
sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and environmental justice.
We are a non-profit organization which does not receive any
federal or state funding to accomplish our leading edge work with Native
American communities. To learn more about our organization’s work please
go to our website at www.7genfund.org.
After you review our updated site, and with this letter, I respectfully
request that you consider supporting our frontline work with Native
communities and send your tax deductible gift to Seventh Generation Fund
today. No donation is too small or insignificant. Every donation will be
acknowledged and I assure you, your generosity is greatly appreciated.
Native communities need your support during these challenging times.
Such a letter is not always easy to write. I would prefer to tell you
only about all the positive, optimistic aspects of Native life and there
are many to share with you. Yet as in all things there is bitter with
sweet, and often for Native peoples, those two are not in balance. Our
work is set forth for us to help assure the balance is restored, for the
people and the Earth.
We are the A:shiwi, the Lakota, the Pomo and the Pitt River peoples. We
are from the Chumash and Squaxin tribes, and we are of the Dine’, the
Cree, and the Kanjobal Mayan Nations. We are Gwich’in and Pohlik-lah. We
are the Seventh Generation Fund, a non-profit Indigenous organization
serving Native American people and whose work is dedicated to building
healthy vibrant communities for the seventh generation yet to come.
Today is Winter Solstice, a sacred time of observance and deep
reflection for Native Communities of the Americas, and the world
community. This time of renewal, transition and thankfulness provides
space for all of us to contemplate the year we have just lived, and
acknowledgement and gratitude for the generosity of the Earth and the
abundant gifts she bestows of water, food, shelter, and spiritual
connection.
Yet, at the same time, today the world can also be a difficult place for
life to flourish. We often struggle as it unravels recognizing that
there are signs of illness everywhere. At this moment, more than 16,000
plant and animal species of the world face imminent extinction. Forests,
the natural lungs of the Earth, are ripped from the ground destroying
rainforests and natural places worldwide. 70,000 spawning salmon on
which Native cultures rely, washed ashore belly up due to diversion of
the Klamath River.
Across the globe, a child dies every eight seconds for lack of access to
clean water. Even the Colorado River no longer meets its destination,
the Gulf of California. Now Native territories and our people are always
thirsty. Birds are dropping from the hot tarnished sky onto the streets
of Mexico City from such serious pollution they literally suffocate in
flight. What was once a rich landscape awake with gardens, flourishing
wheat and cornfields, is becoming a parched land that only tears can
soften today.
The Earth gasps for breath and sacred species of the water, land, and
sky perish by the millions. Native people’s continued health and
existence is also threatened. We have survived massacres, slavery, and
the imposition of the reservation system on our once free Nations. We
have experienced the mass movement of thousands of Indigenous peoples
forced to leave our homelands, and adjust to foreign existence causing
long lasting and deepening illness for us – soul wounds and internalized
oppression.
We all live with the impacts of the social and ecological violence
across the globe and in our own communities today. Some men beat their
wives to death, and also their children.
Right now there are over 500 Indigenous women missing from Canada, 500
more from Mexico, 500 more missing in Guatemala. Native American women
and girls in the United States experience the highest incidence of
sexual assault than any other race, with more than one in three
suffering rape, usually at the hands of non-Indians. There are
communities where three-year-olds sniff paint to get high and escape
their terror and anguish, and we all know of places where teenagers
drink themselves into oblivion, plan their own funerals, and steal from
their grandmothers.
The diminishing vitality of our communities, so deeply connected to the
health of the land, reflects the impact of ongoing colonization of the
Earth, causing worldwide environmental sickness and social turmoil. We
know that the “conquistadors” of 500 years ago are still with us today.
Whether equipped with metal helmets and swords, or black robes and
bringing bibles, or outfitted with pin striped suits and pens, a
destroyers mentality plagues the land - armed and dangerous with weapons
of mass destruction that exploit the landscape and oppress the people,
continuing to ravage our homelands for profit, with impunity.
I have heard that panic comes from a sense of un-relatedness and that
from panic comes chaos. These are very difficult times for everyone, and
for Native American peoples the challenges are almost overwhelming. At
this very moment Indigenous peoples across the Americas – across the
globe – are engaged on the frontlines of a mismatched battle growing
from a worldwide conflict of life and death as two worldviews, one that
is life affirming, and another that is predatory, clash.
Across the United States Native Americans hold on by our fingernails to
the crevices of existence struggling in the face of years of federal
policies stemming from Manifest Destiny such as Termination and
Relocation that have left us devastated, disenfranchised, and
impoverished. Despite these incredibly difficult and challenging times,
we are not a conquered people. We are a hopeful and determined people.
We know our lives and the lives our many people can and will be better.
And with your help, we can win this struggle, for the seventh generation
to come.
The Seventh Generation Fund is a Native American organization that
formed nearly three decades ago to work for one simple and ambitious
purpose, for the good of the seventh generation to come. Our mission is
that straightforward. And your support can truly help us put this
mission of thinking and doing for the seventh generation to come, into
other meaningful action.
With generous assistance from progressive donors and compassionate
activists we have supported grassroots Native projects in struggling
communities that are working to rebuild vibrant communities like the
Good Red Road Project on the Onondaga Reservation in upstate New York.
We have also supported the protection of treaty rights through the
Western Shoshone Defense Project in Nevada for over two and a half
decades.
We have responded to the stresses on natural resources and growing
energy demand by supporting renewable energy and self-help housing
initiatives of the Sustainable Nations Development Project in
California. We have consistently stood with the Gwich’in people and
Native Movement project in Alaska that works for subsistence livelihoods
and against opening up the sacred Arctic Wildlife Refuge, a sacred place
which would be devastated by oil exploitation.
Seventh Generation Fund needs support from concerned people like you to
help us further this important work.
For 28 years, the Seventh Generation Fund has responded to the needs of
immigrant Indigenous tribes by working with projects like Grupo Maya
Qusamej Junan in the Bay Area, comprised of Mayan people which is
developing educational literacy and mental wellness projects. We have
also supported Maya Vision in urban southern California which is the
foremost grassroots organization led by Mayan Indians who provide health
advocacy for Mayan community members living in exile from the terror and
brutality of the 1970-80’s Scorched Earth Policy in Guatemala. And we
work in support of Indigenous communities in Ecuador where more than 45%
of population are Native people.
Thank you for considering supporting our work. Our organization is
unique in the field of philanthropy for its accomplishments, its program
of work, its history, and its mission directed at supporting grassroots
empowerment, sovereignty and citizen action.
With your donation, Seventh Generation Fund can continue to support
Indigenous women’s healing and empowerment such as the Community
Resource Alliance in rural northern Minnesota that provides leadership
and advocacy for domestic violence and assault victims, further securing
the sanctity of Native women as the backbone and carrier of our
cultures.
Over the past year, we have lent support to the Q’os:o:s Networking
Project on the Hoopa Indian Reservation in California and to the
Indigenous Youth Coalition of Pinion, on the Navajo Reservation in
Arizona, who are both community based voices advocating for healthy
families and healthy tribal ecosystems.
Whether you have contributed to Seventh Generation Fund before, or you
are a new donor to our organization, your gift of $100 or more will help
us support those nurturing and guiding vulnerable, at risk youth, such
as the Healing of Nations project which provides community based
training on suicide prevention and culturally relevant recovery
strategies for bereaved families.
And we have fostered the emergence and empowerment of new leaders
through the Native Youth Coalition which was initiated by a young
Zuni/Pohlik-lah woman aged 14, and is now comprised of multi-tribal boys
and girls from seven different communities across the United States. Now
the organization is formalizing, as they learn grassroots organizing
techniques, traditional leadership skills, and developing technology
capacity for innovative application on the frontlines of their own
tribal communities.
Seventh Generation Fund has spoken for the generations at the United
Nations at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, facing those who
would rather ignore our very existence, than uphold our basic human
rights. Your support helped us facilitate the participation of Native
delegations from a diverse array of tribal communities to bring forth
issues of human rights and aboriginal rights abuses, and advocate for
universal education and the end of poverty, into the international
arena.
With the growth of Indian casinos over the last few years, some in the
public believe that all of the needs of Native America are being met.
This could not be further from the truth! Although some tribes have
casinos, far many more tribal communities struggle simply to make ends
meet. Hundreds of Native families strive for a quality of life and
struggle well below the poverty line. Many are hungry.
This is particularly true during the cold winter months of limited food
and harsh weather. Your continued support of our organization helps us
support community initiatives such as the Natwani Coalition on the Hopi
Reservation that is growing their own organic crops for distribution to
community members, elders and children, who are most vulnerable and
hungry at this time of year.
We are one of the longest continually operating people of color
foundations in the Untied States, but we are not a big organization. We
are simply Native people who come from impacted Indigenous communities
throughout the Americas. Our board of directors are community activists,
educators and leaders in their own communities, from throughout Native
America – from the Great Plains to the Southwest, the Pacific
Northcoast, to the Andean region in Ecuador. We are on the frontlines,
and have firsthand experience of the struggles our different people
endure, and working side by side with them, we are defining a healthier
and more vital Native America.
This is about justice – environmental and social justice, cultural and
spiritual justice. These are all of our sacred responsibilities, and our
organization seeks to do our part, with your help, to fulfill these and
leave a legacy of hope and prosperity to assure the health and well
being of the seventh generation.
We are the Cheyenne and the Shoshone people. We are of the
Hopi and Meskwaki Nations, the Haudenosaunee and Kanaka Maoli. And our
children are watching us, learning how to walk carefully on the skin of
Mother Earth. Through honoring our Earth, we affirm our relationships
with land, community and spirit; we help to make the land and the
people, strong again. This is the hope, the sacred birthright, of the
seventh generation to come.
Seventh Generation Fund is devoted to working for justice for the Earth
and for Native American people. I welcome you to review our updated
website at www.7genfund.org or call our office to speak with our staff
directly about our work serving Native communities, at 707-825-7640.
Please send your tax-deductible donation to us today. Together we can
continue walking on a sacred path to secure a legacy for the survival of
the seventh generation yet to come.
Also, we would greatly appreciate it if you would send this letter on to
friends, family, colleagues or anyone who might also like to contribute
to our organization, or to learn more about our work.
As mentioned earlier, the Seventh Generation Fund does not receive
federal or state funding, and we must generate funding support for our
entire organizational work – from programs and training to the special
conferences and convenings we organize, every year. Your donation makes
a big difference to us, and to the many communities we serve. We
appreciate your faith in our work.
E:lah:kwa (Thank you)
Tia Oros Peters
Executive Director
Please send your tax deductible donation to our office at:
Seventh Generation Fund
PO Box 4569
Arcata, California 95518
Seventh Generation Fund is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt, non-profit
organization
Dear Friend of the Seventh Generation,
The Seventh Generation Fund is one of the oldest continually
operating people of color foundations in the United States. Our work is
directed to support grassroots empowerment and Native citizen action for
sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and environmental justice.
We are a non-profit organization which does not receive any
federal or state funding to accomplish our leading edge work with Native
American communities. To learn more about our organization’s work please
go to our website at www.7genfund.org.
After you review our updated site, and with this letter, I respectfully
request that you consider supporting our frontline work with Native
communities and send your tax deductible gift to Seventh Generation Fund
today. No donation is too small or insignificant. Every donation will be
acknowledged and I assure you, your generosity is greatly appreciated.
Native communities need your support during these challenging times.
Such a letter is not always easy to write. I would prefer to tell you
only about all the positive, optimistic aspects of Native life and there
are many to share with you. Yet as in all things there is bitter with
sweet, and often for Native peoples, those two are not in balance. Our
work is set forth for us to help assure the balance is restored, for the
people and the Earth.
We are the A:shiwi, the Lakota, the Pomo and the Pitt River peoples. We
are from the Chumash and Squaxin tribes, and we are of the Dine’, the
Cree, and the Kanjobal Mayan Nations. We are Gwich’in and Pohlik-lah. We
are the Seventh Generation Fund, a non-profit Indigenous organization
serving Native American people and whose work is dedicated to building
healthy vibrant communities for the seventh generation yet to come.
Today is Winter Solstice, a sacred time of observance and deep
reflection for Native Communities of the Americas, and the world
community. This time of renewal, transition and thankfulness provides
space for all of us to contemplate the year we have just lived, and
acknowledgement and gratitude for the generosity of the Earth and the
abundant gifts she bestows of water, food, shelter, and spiritual
connection.
Yet, at the same time, today the world can also be a difficult place for
life to flourish. We often struggle as it unravels recognizing that
there are signs of illness everywhere. At this moment, more than 16,000
plant and animal species of the world face imminent extinction. Forests,
the natural lungs of the Earth, are ripped from the ground destroying
rainforests and natural places worldwide. 70,000 spawning salmon on
which Native cultures rely, washed ashore belly up due to diversion of
the Klamath River.
Across the globe, a child dies every eight seconds for lack of access to
clean water. Even the Colorado River no longer meets its destination,
the Gulf of California. Now Native territories and our people are always
thirsty. Birds are dropping from the hot tarnished sky onto the streets
of Mexico City from such serious pollution they literally suffocate in
flight. What was once a rich landscape awake with gardens, flourishing
wheat and cornfields, is becoming a parched land that only tears can
soften today.
The Earth gasps for breath and sacred species of the water, land, and
sky perish by the millions. Native people’s continued health and
existence is also threatened. We have survived massacres, slavery, and
the imposition of the reservation system on our once free Nations. We
have experienced the mass movement of thousands of Indigenous peoples
forced to leave our homelands, and adjust to foreign existence causing
long lasting and deepening illness for us – soul wounds and internalized
oppression.
We all live with the impacts of the social and ecological violence
across the globe and in our own communities today. Some men beat their
wives to death, and also their children.
Right now there are over 500 Indigenous women missing from Canada, 500
more from Mexico, 500 more missing in Guatemala. Native American women
and girls in the United States experience the highest incidence of
sexual assault than any other race, with more than one in three
suffering rape, usually at the hands of non-Indians. There are
communities where three-year-olds sniff paint to get high and escape
their terror and anguish, and we all know of places where teenagers
drink themselves into oblivion, plan their own funerals, and steal from
their grandmothers.
The diminishing vitality of our communities, so deeply connected to the
health of the land, reflects the impact of ongoing colonization of the
Earth, causing worldwide environmental sickness and social turmoil. We
know that the “conquistadors” of 500 years ago are still with us today.
Whether equipped with metal helmets and swords, or black robes and
bringing bibles, or outfitted with pin striped suits and pens, a
destroyers mentality plagues the land - armed and dangerous with weapons
of mass destruction that exploit the landscape and oppress the people,
continuing to ravage our homelands for profit, with impunity.
I have heard that panic comes from a sense of un-relatedness and that
from panic comes chaos. These are very difficult times for everyone, and
for Native American peoples the challenges are almost overwhelming. At
this very moment Indigenous peoples across the Americas – across the
globe – are engaged on the frontlines of a mismatched battle growing
from a worldwide conflict of life and death as two worldviews, one that
is life affirming, and another that is predatory, clash.
Across the United States Native Americans hold on by our fingernails to
the crevices of existence struggling in the face of years of federal
policies stemming from Manifest Destiny such as Termination and
Relocation that have left us devastated, disenfranchised, and
impoverished. Despite these incredibly difficult and challenging times,
we are not a conquered people. We are a hopeful and determined people.
We know our lives and the lives our many people can and will be better.
And with your help, we can win this struggle, for the seventh generation
to come.
The Seventh Generation Fund is a Native American organization that
formed nearly three decades ago to work for one simple and ambitious
purpose, for the good of the seventh generation to come. Our mission is
that straightforward. And your support can truly help us put this
mission of thinking and doing for the seventh generation to come, into
other meaningful action.
With generous assistance from progressive donors and compassionate
activists we have supported grassroots Native projects in struggling
communities that are working to rebuild vibrant communities like the
Good Red Road Project on the Onondaga Reservation in upstate New York.
We have also supported the protection of treaty rights through the
Western Shoshone Defense Project in Nevada for over two and a half
decades.
We have responded to the stresses on natural resources and growing
energy demand by supporting renewable energy and self-help housing
initiatives of the Sustainable Nations Development Project in
California. We have consistently stood with the Gwich’in people and
Native Movement project in Alaska that works for subsistence livelihoods
and against opening up the sacred Arctic Wildlife Refuge, a sacred place
which would be devastated by oil exploitation.
Seventh Generation Fund needs support from concerned people like you to
help us further this important work.
For 28 years, the Seventh Generation Fund has responded to the needs of
immigrant Indigenous tribes by working with projects like Grupo Maya
Qusamej Junan in the Bay Area, comprised of Mayan people which is
developing educational literacy and mental wellness projects. We have
also supported Maya Vision in urban southern California which is the
foremost grassroots organization led by Mayan Indians who provide health
advocacy for Mayan community members living in exile from the terror and
brutality of the 1970-80’s Scorched Earth Policy in Guatemala. And we
work in support of Indigenous communities in Ecuador where more than 45%
of population are Native people.
Thank you for considering supporting our work. Our organization is
unique in the field of philanthropy for its accomplishments, its program
of work, its history, and its mission directed at supporting grassroots
empowerment, sovereignty and citizen action.
With your donation, Seventh Generation Fund can continue to support
Indigenous women’s healing and empowerment such as the Community
Resource Alliance in rural northern Minnesota that provides leadership
and advocacy for domestic violence and assault victims, further securing
the sanctity of Native women as the backbone and carrier of our
cultures.
Over the past year, we have lent support to the Q’os:o:s Networking
Project on the Hoopa Indian Reservation in California and to the
Indigenous Youth Coalition of Pinion, on the Navajo Reservation in
Arizona, who are both community based voices advocating for healthy
families and healthy tribal ecosystems.
Whether you have contributed to Seventh Generation Fund before, or you
are a new donor to our organization, your gift of $100 or more will help
us support those nurturing and guiding vulnerable, at risk youth, such
as the Healing of Nations project which provides community based
training on suicide prevention and culturally relevant recovery
strategies for bereaved families.
And we have fostered the emergence and empowerment of new leaders
through the Native Youth Coalition which was initiated by a young
Zuni/Pohlik-lah woman aged 14, and is now comprised of multi-tribal boys
and girls from seven different communities across the United States. Now
the organization is formalizing, as they learn grassroots organizing
techniques, traditional leadership skills, and developing technology
capacity for innovative application on the frontlines of their own
tribal communities.
Seventh Generation Fund has spoken for the generations at the United
Nations at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, facing those who
would rather ignore our very existence, than uphold our basic human
rights. Your support helped us facilitate the participation of Native
delegations from a diverse array of tribal communities to bring forth
issues of human rights and aboriginal rights abuses, and advocate for
universal education and the end of poverty, into the international
arena.
With the growth of Indian casinos over the last few years, some in the
public believe that all of the needs of Native America are being met.
This could not be further from the truth! Although some tribes have
casinos, far many more tribal communities struggle simply to make ends
meet. Hundreds of Native families strive for a quality of life and
struggle well below the poverty line. Many are hungry.
This is particularly true during the cold winter months of limited food
and harsh weather. Your continued support of our organization helps us
support community initiatives such as the Natwani Coalition on the Hopi
Reservation that is growing their own organic crops for distribution to
community members, elders and children, who are most vulnerable and
hungry at this time of year.
We are one of the longest continually operating people of color
foundations in the Untied States, but we are not a big organization. We
are simply Native people who come from impacted Indigenous communities
throughout the Americas. Our board of directors are community activists,
educators and leaders in their own communities, from throughout Native
America – from the Great Plains to the Southwest, the Pacific
Northcoast, to the Andean region in Ecuador. We are on the frontlines,
and have firsthand experience of the struggles our different people
endure, and working side by side with them, we are defining a healthier
and more vital Native America.
This is about justice – environmental and social justice, cultural and
spiritual justice. These are all of our sacred responsibilities, and our
organization seeks to do our part, with your help, to fulfill these and
leave a legacy of hope and prosperity to assure the health and well
being of the seventh generation.
We are the Cheyenne and the Shoshone people. We are of the
Hopi and Meskwaki Nations, the Haudenosaunee and Kanaka Maoli. And our
children are watching us, learning how to walk carefully on the skin of
Mother Earth. Through honoring our Earth, we affirm our relationships
with land, community and spirit; we help to make the land and the
people, strong again. This is the hope, the sacred birthright, of the
seventh generation to come.
Seventh Generation Fund is devoted to working for justice for the Earth
and for Native American people. I welcome you to review our updated
website at www.7genfund.org or call our office to speak with our staff
directly about our work serving Native communities, at 707-825-7640.
Please send your tax-deductible donation to us today. Together we can
continue walking on a sacred path to secure a legacy for the survival of
the seventh generation yet to come.
Also, we would greatly appreciate it if you would send this letter on to
friends, family, colleagues or anyone who might also like to contribute
to our organization, or to learn more about our work.
As mentioned earlier, the Seventh Generation Fund does not receive
federal or state funding, and we must generate funding support for our
entire organizational work – from programs and training to the special
conferences and convenings we organize, every year. Your donation makes
a big difference to us, and to the many communities we serve. We
appreciate your faith in our work.
E:lah:kwa (Thank you)
Tia Oros Peters
Executive Director
Please send your tax deductible donation to our office at:
Seventh Generation Fund
PO Box 4569
Arcata, California 95518
Seventh Generation Fund is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt, non-profit
organization