OUR FUNDRAISING and ADVOCACY are EFFORTS to BRING TOGETHER CULTURAL HEALING from BOTH SIDES of the COLONIAL DIVIDE with a SHARED GOAL of SEEKING PEACE with NATURE and EACH OTHER.
Our approach to fundraising and project funding is through the lens of a concept referred to as Two-Eyed Seeing. It is learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western (and/or scientific) knowledge and ways of knowing while learning to use both of these eyes together for the benefit of all.
Having said that, we should not let historical suspicions and mistrust keep us from reaching across the colonial divide to seek cross cultural solutions to the existential threat of our times. We have a shared need of finding peace with nature and each other.
Part of our advocacy is to bring awareness and understanding to the settler/colonialist society…individuals who have never been taught or exposed to the realities of what Indigenous Peoples have had to live with all of their lives. With awareness and understanding comes compassion and support.
Those of us from the settler society, need to acknowledge that we are beneficiaries of ancestral colonialism, imperialism, Indigenous betrayal, cultural genocide and ecological exploitation…products of the patriarchal and hierarchical reality of competitive exchange and materialism…the market economy.