There are twelve blocks on the Okiciyap quilt. They were created and contributed for the Okiciyap Quilt Auction, to benefit the Okiciyap program and ideally give it a little breathing room before summer.
Twelve blocks.
Each one a beautiful piece. Each one an example of sharing, containing – as any piece of true art or craft does – an infusion of the heart & soul of its creator, all gathered together to create a beautiful quilt for people to bid upon.
There are twelve months in the standard calendar year that most of us use to mark the passage of time. Each month represents a portion of the year, which is the increment of time denoting the completion of our small planet's circuit of the life-giving star we call the Sun. We also divide the months on our calendars into seasons, grouping certain months or collections of weeks and months into categories that provide us with a thumbnail sketch of the weather patterns we expect to encounter.
This allows us to prepare, as individuals and communities, for times of planting and harvest. For times when we can forage, or when we should gather & store more fuel for the colder months, or when we should fertilize fields in preparation of coming winters.
Our calendars mark our future, so that we can plan for it effectively. Our calendars also allow us to coordinate within and between our communities.
And our calendars also help us mark the passage of time, record our history and remember our past – special times, events, and memories of those who have walked before us, or alongside us, but who walk among us no longer.
Twelve months. Twelve blocks. It's fitting.
And the Auction is coming – an opportunity for you to help, to reach out and again touch the hearts & souls of others, and possibly receive a warm embrace in the form of a beautifully crafted quilt in return.
Follow me across the warm and friendly orange community doodle to learn more.
Okiciyap ("we help") is a food pantry and youth program on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation that was started by Georgia Little Shield:
"A lot of you are already familiar with the name Georgia Little Shield1. She was the founder of Pretty Bird Woman House, and betson08 has a long history of activism here at Daily Kos on behalf of the shelter and other projects. More recently, betson08 has been helping raise awareness and raise funds for Georgia's most recent project, at Isabel on the Cheyenne River Reservation: Okiciyap ("We Help," in Lakota).
Okiciyap is a nonprofit organization that is currently establishing a food pantry to feed the reservation's hungry at Isabel (and there are many). Part of the long-term project plan includes establishing a youth center, in part, to help stem the epidemic of suicides among young people on the rez.
-- Aji, Kos Katalogue Members (& Others): A Warrior Woman Needs Our Help
Okiciyap is already having a positive impact: they are building a storage extension, and just completed a 5-week parenting program.
They'd like our help: that's where you come in. Participating in the auction – whether directly or simply by helping us let others know – will help raise funds, ideally to help give them a little "breathing room" before summer.
Personally, I'd like the auction to be wildly successful, and give them a head start on funding not only to get through the summer but also get a jump on fall & winter funding needs. Such a success would give them the capacity to refocus any bandwidth currently concentrating on fundraising toward buttressing their existing work & set the foundations for reaching their additional goals.
The Auction begins on March 27th. Here are the rules:
RULES-RULES-RULES
- Auction runs from 5:00 p.m. (12:00 CDT) Wednesday, March 27th to Sunday, April 7 at approximately 7:00 p.m. CDT. The last two+ hours of the auction will be held online. If no higher bids are posted by 7:10 p.m. the best bid before 7:00 p.m. will be declared the winner.
- [1.1] The auction will end as soon as no higher bids are posted within 10 minutes of the highest bid received. Final bids will be decided by the time posted on the message. The decision of the judges (weck, Pam from Calif and glorificus) on winning bid is final.
- [1.2] After the final bid is decided and the successful bidder notified, the donation will be made, and once confirmed, BeadLady will send the quilt to the lucky winner!
- Bids will be accepted by making comments in diaries, as well as by kosmailing weck and/or glorificus.
- [2.1] If you wish to remain anonymous, you may set that up with weck or glorificus in advance, and we will use a number when we post your bids in a diary. (example = Anon-02)
- [2.2] If you want to leave an absentee bid, you may do that with either weck or glorificus. We will need the highest amount you are willing to bid and we will place those bids for you in 10 dollar increments as the bidding progresses throughout the auction. If the bidding goes higher than you first authorized, you may contact the same person again with a new top limit, or bid in the diaries. Absentee bids should be placed with weck or glorificus as far in advance as possible.
- Bidding by groups is allowed, as long as only one contact name is used. Please let us know the details of your group and who is the official spokesperson for the group.
- Bidding is in minimum increments of $10.00. You may bid in higher increments that can be divided evenly by $10.00.
- [4.1] Bids must be in U.S. funds.
- weck and glorificus will do their best to inform all bidders of the newest high bid. To receive this information in your Kosmail box, please ask weck or glorificus to join Daily Kos Quilt Guild Auction Alliance group.
We will send groupmail to everyone (Each member will be made an editor for the duration of the auction) Reminder* groupmail doesn't show up on your main page; you will have to check for messages manually.*
- A PayPal link will be included for other donations to Okiciyap. While we cherish the thought that you may choose to donate to Okiciyap during the auction, only the winning bid counts. While you may not want to win the quilt, we will happily accept $5, $20 or any other amount.
- [6.1 ] It is not necessary to donate through the PayPal to Okiciyap to participate in the auction.
- The winning bidder can make payment arrangements that are not through PayPal with weck or glorificus. We know that some folks don't use Paypal.
- The winning bidder will have 48 hours to confirm their success. After 48 hours, the judges may, at their discretion, offer the second highest bidder the opportunity to redeem the quilt. The decision of the judges is final. The judges are weck, glorificus and (to ensure fairness) Pam from Calif.
For those who'd prefer to contribute to Okicyap directly, here's the address for direct donations to the: Okiciyap (we help) Food Pantry
P.O. Box 172
Isabel, SD 57633
Footnotes
1 A little information about Georgia Little Shield:
It has been 182 years since the Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson. With tribes then and for decades afterward being forced onto reservations, and no Marshall Plan to help them rebuild after the Indian Wars, Native people are still struggling to stay alive. Many don't make it. Fighting against all odds—of poverty, 80 percent unemployment, hunger, government bureaucracy, societal indifference—a few people stand as warriors to help their communities of limited means even when they themselves often don't have enough means, living as they do on fixed incomes of $260 to $460 a month.
One of those warriors is Georgia Little Shield (Lakota). She was the director of Pretty Bird Woman House, a women's shelter on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, from 2005 until 2010 when health problems forced her to quit. In 2007, the Daily Kos community helped raise more than $30,000 to keep Pretty Bird Woman House running.
In 2011, Little Shield's health improved. On the Cheyenne River Reservation in north-central South Dakota due south of Standing Rock, she saw an important need for a community-strengthening program to fight poverty, hunger and the epidemic of teen suicide.
So she founded Okiciyap, the Lakota word for we help, in Isabel, a reservation town of about 250 people. Okiciyap (we help) the Isabel Community's (501c3) first project is a food pantry "trying to keep families alive for one more winter." The group has plans to build a youth center with a GED program "to keep our young people's souls and spirits alive, too."
-- navajo, First Nations News & Views: Okiciyap, the Dawes Act & Elders Get Heard from K-12 to College (4)
More information about Georgia Little Shield can be found on
the Okiciyap website.
