Winter 2023-2024: (Belated) Solstice Newsletter
Happy (belated) Solstice!
We’re entering that time of year where the days are about to once more get longer, but also where many of our communities are preparing to share and tell stories for the colder season. We hope that this finds you all getting some rest in your revolutionary efforts!
What have we gotten up to this season?
We’re preparing to come and visit in Sioux Lookout! Youth leaders will be at Pelican Falls High School, facilitating the Sexy Health Carnival alongside the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority. That carnival will be for students in the high school only, and if that’s you please come by to visit!
We’re continuing work on building up a bundle for adults interested in supporting 2S, trans, and gender diverse Indigenous young people, with our fabulous team beginning writing this fall. Launch tentatively end of 2024/start of 2025. We’re also working behind-the-scenes on revising and drafting a new version of our SHC Toolkit, coming to you early-mid 2024!
This season also sees us celebrating the contributions and journeys of two NYSHN-ers, MJ Laing (he/she/they) and Iehente Foote (she/her).
Iehente has been organizing with NYSHN for over 15+ years, utilizing arts and theater to bring conversations about sexual and reproductive justice back home to our communities. In the past 15 years, she has presented several times at the UN permanent forum of Indigenous Peoples, become a full spectrum doula in her community of Kahnawake, and kicked colonizer butt in association with our youth councils and our home fire of international HIV&AIDS co-conspiring.
MJ came to us pre-pandemic, and has bravely and generously continued to lend us her immense gifts ever since. Funny, wise, and smart, in his time with NYSHN MJ has completed their Masters thesis, Conversations with Young Two-Spirit, Trans and Queer Indigenous People About the Term Two-Spirit and created a zine version. Perhaps most amazingly, MJ took up the work of copy-editing, core-team wrangling, and general cat herding that gently and beautifully carried our project You Are Made of Medicine out into the world, after many years of youth leader and auntie-mentor contributions. We are so grateful for what MJ has generously brought to our internal organizing structures and his kick-ass support.
Go Mohawks!
What do we recommend?
Reducing COVID risk
Yale’s School of Public Health has released some hot new COVID-19 recommendations! Many core team member’s ended up using iso-carrageenan nasal sprays (like this), and HEPA filters during our in-person meeting this November. We’re also pretty psyched to share with you that we’ve learned about a FREE distribution service for masks and respirators— get your free masks now!
Faxing Justin Trudeau
Truly if we must be oppressed by the ongoing violence of this settler-colonial state, we may as well use an online fax website to pester the office of the colonizer-in-charge. Send JT a fax saying you want Palestinian people’s self-governance and safety to be recognized and upheld, the way ours hasn’t been since 1492 🙃
Here’s a link to Palestinian Youth Movement’s list of action items rn! We <3 grassroots youth movements.
Sharing & Subscribing to our Substack
Y’know. If you wanted to. Handcrafted every solstice or equinox, we’ll send you some updates, recomendations, and ofcourse only the finest hand-selected, NYSHN-created Memes.
And Finally… Memes!
At the end of every core team meeting, we make memes to debrief what we all talked about! Here are some of our favorite out-of-context memes from the fall season.