We are challenging everyone in the Burning Man ecosystem to Give Back to the local Native American community. You can make a targeted donation below, or support the Action Fund, which underwrites a variety of programs and service projects, including all of the itemized ones listed below.
Missing Indigenous Girls and Women
DONATIONS – Venmo Beverly-harry with the note “Towards Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women”
In 2017, 5,646 Native women were reported missing in the United States. Nationwide, the murder rate for Native women is ten times that of the average American. Some of the factors are easy to identify: jurisdictional confusion between local state-run police, the FBI, and tribal or Bureau of Indian Affairs police departments routinely leads to slow response times; slow response times allow for bodies, and thus the perpetrator’s DNA, to decompose and disappear; and slow response times lead to cold trails and dead-end cases, which make local law enforcement hesitant to undertake new cases. In 2017, U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 37 percent of Indian Country cases, citing lack of evidence in 70 percent of the cases they dropped (more here – https://newrepublic.com/article/155367/connection-pipelines-sexual-violence). Beverly Harry, Progressive Leadership Association of Nevada (PLAN) Native Community Organizer and member of the Navajo Tribe, “We begin to wonder if the state and national leaders understand the horrific relationship with the violence against indigenous women and our Earth Mother. There’s a pattern the leaders need to break about supporting projects that is not about their land but deriving wealth from stolen land. Native women see our federal leaders not playing the correct role in protecting and not understanding trust responsibility.” It’s a big issue and they need support. Beverly Harry (Venmo donation recipient) is THE major NV advocate (quoted in The New Republic) and spends these donations towards her work. There is no website, because there are too few resources to build one and the money goes straight to the cause. This is a big deal.
Great Basin Water Network – https://greatbasinwater.org
Donations – https://greatbasinwater.org/donate/
The Great Basin Water Network is a Nevada-based 501(c)3 organization working to protect plant, animal and human resources for future generations. For more than 30 years their coalition has fought to protect water in the nation’s driest places to preserve plant, animal and human life throughout Nevada and Utah. They have a track record of winning in courts of law and courts of public opinion because water is the most valuable asset any desert has. They want to keep it local. They want to keep it for all living things to use.
Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) – https://planevada.org
Donation – https://planevada.org/donate/
The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) was founded in 1994 to bring together diverse and potentially competing organizations into one cohesive force for social and environmental justice in Nevada, and continues to do so. Since 1994, their organization has grown from 12 original founding member groups to a current membership of nearly 30 organizations! PLAN organizes to ensure all people have a voice, and are excited about leveraging unprecedented organizing opportunities to strengthen their work. From gender and criminal justice to water protection, Nevadans are engaged in crucial battles at a level unseen in previous years and are working together agitating and organizing.
Protect Thacker Pass – https://thackerpass.com/index.html
Donation – https://www.gofundme.com/f/j2gx7f-people-of-red-mountain
Donation – https://www.gofundme.com/f/peeeheemuhuhlanddefender
In January 2021, the US Bureau of Land Management approved a two-square-mile open-pit mine known as the Thacker Pass in Nevada. When it opens for business in a few years, it will be the nation’s largest source of lithium supply generating 60,000 metric tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate annually. Lithium Nevada Corp. – a subsidiary of the Canadian corporation Lithium Americas Corp. – proposes to build an open pit lithium mine with a project area of 17,933 acres. When the mine is in full operation, it will use 5,200 acre-feet per year (equivalent to an average pumping rate of 3,224 gallons per minute) in one of the driest regions in the nation. Meanwhile, despite Lithium Nevada’s characterization of the mine as “green,” the company estimates in the FEIS that it will produce 152,703 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions every year. The water, air, land, wildlife, plants, and everything in between will all pay the ultimate price for lithium powered batteries for electric vehicles. This mine will cause irreversible harm to the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, ancestral massacre sites, water, air, medicines, and culturally important wildlife. The Bureau of Land Management approved the mine on January 15, 2021, without adequately consulting our tribal members. The donations received will go towards protecting this land from being used.
Ripple Project
VISION – A world of individuals empowered to regenerate cultural and ecological resilience through the support of a responsive community.
MISSION – Create the first self-reliant Ripple Base at Fly Ranch as a tool for building a responsive community to regenerate the cultural and ecological resilience of the Great Basin Region.
Learn More and Donate : https://www.flyripple.org/support
Native Solidarity Project
*Donating to the Native Solidarity Project goes to support internal organizing work, and and is not on behalf of any tribe.
Two Spirit Queer Alliance
