Thanks; October 9 2021

Bizarrely, 31 feels markedly different from 30.

Maybe I just have more going on, or maybe it’s because my last birthday was spent in a haze of dissociation as I dealt with the full brunt of my life as I knew it falling apart. You know how it is.

Not to say I had much of a better time, this sixth of October. It was a day of high stress and government-mandated errands, of downed phone networks and preschooler tantrums. There was one enormous difference, though: I was among friends! One of my roommates made me a chocolate cake from scratch, which was absolutely delightful and made me very emotional.

I’m planning on fielding Thanksgiving dinner this Monday – for my non-Canadian readers, ours is coming up on the 11th – because I want to do something for my roommates, too. Now, rest assured, I do hate Thanksgiving. Celebrating colonization is not something I’m a fan of.

With that in mind, I actually wanted to compile a list of Indigenous Canadian Charities you could give to, this Thanksgiving!

… And then I found a site that had already done that!

So, I want to direct y’all to ‘circleacts.org’.

The charities listed by circleacts.org

They don’t just list the charities, naturally – clicking any of these will take you further down the page, where you can read a bit about the charity in question. From there, you can also click on that organization and enter the amount you want to give – super simple!

The current estimate for Indigenous child deaths at residential schools in Canada is, last I heard, 6509. We don’t even know if that’s right. There could be so much more. This article is from September 29, 2021 – we might’ve found more by now without the news reaching me. The Canadian government owes the Indigenous community so much more than reparations. As citizens, all we can do is pitch in where we can and try to vote in people who care about Indigenous issues. That’s our responsibility.

So, yeah – even if you aren’t Canadian, please check out those organizations and donate if you can!