CALLOUT TO INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES!!

SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR UPCOMING ZINE BY FSIS – DEADLINE SEPT 30, 2013

Our Voices Matter : Talking Back

Families of Sisters in Spirit (FSIS) believes in centering stories and voices of Indigenous women, youth, families, communities and Nations. Highlighting our lived experiences as well as our power, resilience and strength are absolutely essential if we are to move forward as Indigenous peoples together in a good way; in a way that nurtures strong relations with non-Indigenous and settler peoples and ensures our collective futures are free from violence and oppression.

What?

An online and print zine for and by First Nations, Métis, Inuit and mixed-heritage Indigenous peoples, women, youth, families, Elders, elders, two-spirit/queer/gender fabulous, and grassroots folks. Please send us your submissions!

We are accepting a wide variety of submissions including memoirs, personal testimonies, short stories, short plays, prose, poetry, lyrics, photographs, art, collages, paintings, drawings, carvings, sculptures or other creative commentary by Indigenous peoples. We encourage emerging and unpublished as well as more established storytellers to submit. Topics are fairly broad but should speak to historical and ongoing colonial violence in Canada and what we need as Indigenous people to heal, resist and live as we were always meant to be.

Why?

We are making this zine in order to and validate our many and varied experiences of interpersonal and structural violence and celebrate our resilience and community power. Sharing our struggles and triumphs are acts of resistance and survival and show us that we are not alone. Our voices matter and affirm our self-determination as well as interdependence to one another and Mother Earth, and strengthens our families and communities.

Why else?

Because it feels like hardly nobody listens to us! Because Indigenous stories and experiences, especially those of women, are not valued as they should be. Because too often our complex realities are ignored and erased. Because we are tired of policies, decisions, and committees made on our behalf by people who are far removed from our realities. Because we are tired of people speaking for us and about us. Because we need to be the ones telling our stories. Because we are the experts in our own lives and we are talking back!

Who?

Families of Sisters in Spirit (FSIS) is a grassroots, non-profit, all volunteer, unfunded organization by family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls with support and solidarity from Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies and friends. FSIS is committed to extensive public education, media and social media engagement, fundraising, and especially capacity and relationship-building with/among Indigenous families of missing and murdered women and girls. We believe in facilitating safe(r) spaces for families to share, grieve and strategize together, privately and publicly. FSIS follows anti-oppressive, anti-colonial and Indigenous feminist frameworks that root our work in radical relationships with the land, one another, our ancestors and future descendents.

Two members of FSIS Colleen Cardinal (Hele) and Kristen Gilchrist have taken the lead in launching Our Voices Matter: Talking Back

Colleen Cardinal (Hele): zhaawanongnoodin mihingan dodem, saddle lake n’doojbah

My name is Southwind woman, I am wolf clan originally from Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Alberta on Treaty 6 territory. I am a Plains Cree mother of four young adults and grandma to a lively granddaughter named Rosalie. I am in the beginning stages of producing a documentary called The Sixties Scoop: A Stolen Generation that follows six First Nation women and men who were forcibly adopted out of their Nations and placed into non-Indigenous households far away from their families or homelands in the middle of the 20th century. I am a Sixties Scoop survivor raising awareness about how historical colonial violence has impacted and continues to shape my family. My sister Charmaine Desa was murdered in 1990 and my sister-in-law Lynne Jackson was also killed in 2004. I have been involved with FSIS for more than a year, often engaging in public education about violence(s) against Indigenous women and girls.

Kristen Gilchrist self-identifies as a white settler, queer/femme, survivor of violence(s), living with invisible disabilities, and situated within/across intersecting dimensions of privilege and oppression, agency and constraint. I am a graduate student in sociology at Carleton University, co-founder and allied/non family member with FSIS, and ally in the sex workers’ rights movement in the Ottawa area — traditional Algonquin territories.

How?

Please send all submissions to fsiszine@gmail.com with SUBMISSION as the subject. If it can’t be emailed, mail it to:

Suite 601, 250 City Centre Ave
Ottawa, ON K1R 6K7
℅ FSIS (zine)

The deadline is NOW September 30, 2013 at 11:59 pm! All submissions and inquiries about submissions should be sent to fsiszine@gmail.com

In your submission, please include:

– Your name (or name you want to be published)
– RELIABLE Contact information (in case we need to talk to you about your work)
– A brief (50-100 word) bio or description of who you are/what you do, etc. (if you want to include it)
– Please make sure all attachments are either in PDF, JPEG, Word, RTF, BMP or any other compatible program.
– Your submission should be in an attachment, not copy/pasted into the email. (If you have trouble with attachments, email us for help!)

*We acknowledge the limitations and contradictions inherent in requesting and publishing submissions in the colonial English language. Our hope is this is a starting place for sharing and that many different translations could be possible in the future.*

Want to submit? Get involved in the planning/making of the zine?
Wanna support FSIS?
Got concerns, questions, etc?
Email us at fsiszine@gmail.com to talk and if you’d like to get involved.

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