​Hosted by Michael Migizi Sullivan & Preston Manidood Sullivan 
Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Time: 6:30 p.m. CST
Free virtual event via Zoom. Registration is required.
Register by Friday, February 4

Registrants will receive the Zoom Link on Tuesday, February 8 - a day BEFORE the session. Make sure you in put your correct email and know that sometimes the zoom link info email will go to your junk or spam email folder. 

Michael Sullivan Sr. and his 14-year-old son Preston will share traditional stories about Wenabozho, a historical and spiritual icon of the Ojibwe-Anishinaabeg. Both will share a story and each story will be translated into English. The Sullivans come from the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in Northern Wisconsin. No recording will be allowed. 

Sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Human Services Behavioral Health Division via our Waaseyaa Healing Grant and the McKnight Foundation. ​

About the Event

More information on Wilder Buffalo - Buffalo and Ben
Wilder Buffalo is a monthly concert / conversation event which takes place on the land. A collaboration between Oyate Hotanin, Strong Buffalo and Ben Weaver it began back in 2018 in the Twin Cities. They created Wilder Buffalo because they saw that people needed more opportunities to connect with each other outside. To witness, share, and build trust. To support each other in actively establishing imaginative ways to heal and build anti-racist, anti-extractive culture. After all, this is the role of the imagination and art, to heal and create.

How does a Wilder Buffalo event work?:
Wilder Buffalo events are always free and held outside in public space. There is an Eventbrite page where you can register. Once you register you will immediately be emailed a pin location for where the concert will be held. You are then invited to join one of the group bike rides to the concert location or to navigate yourself to the event location however you feel most comfortable.

How is Wilder Buffalo Connected to the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon?:
Since 2019 a group has been riding the marathon on fat tire bicycles. They stop at the Sawbill check point and volunteer to help the mushers as they come through. They do this to build community around winter and to celebrate the stories of the people, plants, water and animals, who have and continue to live here.

Special Guests:
​Alexandra Houchin, Lyz Jaakola, and Rob Fairbanks.

*AICHO encourages people to wear face masks and keep social distance even though this is an outdoor event.*

​“The past is more than a memory.” -John Trudell​

The American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO) has advocated for housing for American Indian people since 1993. AICHO operates the only culturally-specific domestic violence emergency shelter in Northeast Minnesota, offering safety and advocacy.  AICHO created transitional housing and permanent supportive housing in response to the need for safe, affordable housing. Over the course of nearly three decades, the need for housing has only increased and become more complicated. But the root of American Indian homelessness goes back much further.
 
The truth is the land we all live on is originally Indigenous land. Tribal communities have thrived here and had ample resources, including homes for all Tribal citizens. With colonization and conquest, Indigenous communities endured great losses and survived intentional, massive actions to eliminate their communities, their people, and their cultural ways. Much of this history has been erased and the harm has not yet fully been acknowledged. This includes land theft, systemic violence, and policies that robbed Tribal Nations of economic power, cultural rights, and community integrity.

The question we must ask ourselves is this: how can American Indian people be homeless in their original homelands? ​​​ 

Photo courtesy of LAMAR Advertising

The American Indian Community Housing Organization is calling on advocates, city – county – state – national and tribal leaders, community members, and service providers to rise up in support of the movement to prevent and end MMIW AND domestic violence, which disproportionately affects millions of American Indians and Alaska Natives each year.

​AICHO would like to say miigwech to artist Weshoyot (Tongva Nation from the Los Angeles Basin) who we commissioned for sharing her illustrated artwork piece for our billboard project and for bringing attention to the issue of MMIW. She is a comic book artist and illustrator and was born in the Santa Monica Mountains on the property of Satwiwa, a cultural center started by her father Art Alvitre. She grew up close to the land and raised with traditional knowledge that inspires the work she does today. (Info taken from her artist bio).
​
​To find more about her, go to: https://www.weshoyot.com/ and find her on social media. Billboard was designed by Moira Villiard, Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwe Direct Descendant & artist, utilizing Weshoyot’s artwork with artist permission. Billboard will be on display starting this week for up to 4 weeks in Onigaaminsing (Duluth, MN).

Download the published report by the Minnesota Task Force for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

​Congratulations also to Ivy Vainio of First Nations Community Partner American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO), who was one of 12 Indigenous people to receive a Maada’ookiing Grassroots Grant coordinated through the Northland Foundation. 

The grant was awarded for Ivy’s project to create a billboard banner and companion poster to inspire Indigenous (and diverse) girls and youth to strive for more within their education and seek their potential. The billboard and poster feature Shoshone-Bannock tribal citizen and Red Lake Nation descendant Jennie Murillo who is in her third year of medical school at the University of Minnesota. Niigaanii in the Ojibwe language means “S/he leads.” The billboard banner will be installed on Life House, Duluth’s youth transitional housing complex in downtown Duluth for up to a year.- First Nations Development Institute ​

Click the file below to download a Niigaanii flyer.

Photo courtesy of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice

Headwaters Foundation for Justice (HFJ) is deeply investing in 22 organizations or coalitions that are led by and for Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color. We, at the American Indian Community Housing Organization, are proud and grateful to be included! 

​The group of grantees are on the front lines of organizing for systems change across Minnesota. Each $75,000 grant gives $25,000 of general operating support per year for three years—an HFJ first.

“This is our mission in action,” program director Melissa Rudnick said. “Organizations need and deserve flexible grant dollars to support their work towards justice, self-determination, and collective liberation. Philanthropy’s responsibility is to do more than just listen. We must respond, which is why I’m proud to see the community help Headwaters move this money exactly where it’s needed.” 

Visit their website for a full list of grant recipients to learn more about the Transformation Fund, the grant recipients, and the community grant makers who powered this grant-making process.