Bozho jayek!
Hello everyone!
September 2023
It’s great to be headed into autumn knowing that the students and community members we support are well-stocked with period care items to help them stay in school or at work when on their moon times. Thanks to our donors’ generosity, we agreed to support three new schools in August alone.
Our work is getting noticed! Our efforts to address period poverty in North American Indigenous communities were featured in Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s newsletter and recently republished by the Boston Globe. We’ve also received large grants from several new donors. But, as you can imagine, we continue to look for financial and other support to supply menstruators with the basic necessities for their period care.
Currently, we are meeting the moon time needs of folks served by 121 schools, nonprofit organizations and Native Nation-operated clinics, coast to coast, across 14 U.S. states and Canada’s Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador provinces.
We’ve distributed almost 1.7 million period care items along with more than 19,000 moon time bags and puberty education books. (Based on a large donation from U by Kotex® that will be delivered to Oklahoma City Public Schools soon, we will blow past the 2 million mark before year-end.)
Further, we’ve facilitated distributions of almost 1,600 high-quality sports bras – just this year – through the terrific nonprofit run by Dr. Sarah Lesko, Bras for Girls. We are ready to help more menstruators, so please let us know of Indigenous communities that need our help, and please join in to help us!
Migwetch/thank you for supporting us as we celebrate moon times across Native North America.
Eva Marie Carney
Founder + Executive Director
Personal account: The Flower Dance Ceremony
Katie Jäger-Bowie, a Citizen Potawatomi Nation tribal member living in Northern California and a Kwek Society supporter, recently shared with us her personal account of the Flower Dance coming-of-age ceremony Katie and her family and community celebrated with and for Katie’s 18-year-old daughter, Trinity. The ceremony is a tradition that has been revived by the Yurok, Hoopa Valley, and Wiyot tribes, heritage Trinity shares with her father. The Traditional Teachings part of our website includes an overview of the Ch’iwa:l ceremony.
Katie told us that Trinity’s ceremony took place over a few days, during which Trinity ran across culturally significant tribal lands, wore varied regalia that Katie made for her, and participated in an evening of community song and dance that welcomed Trinity into her role as a woman and an adult. During this evening ceremony, Trinity wore a blindfold as those around her danced and sang in rounds from sundown until sunrise. Trinity was instructed to remove her blindfold as the morning ceremony began and then was presented as an adult to everyone present. All then enjoyed a community feast with bowls full of berries and other delicious foods.
Katie also shared with us that, in preparation for her Flower Dance ceremony, Trinity completed a ten-day traditional acorn fast. Around the same time frame, Trinity also completed a ten-day berry fast in acknowledgment of her Potawatomi heritage.
Katie told us that she encouraged Trinity’s participation in the ceremony because others in the community who have had a Flower Dance ceremony “talk about how important it was to them later in life.” Katie noted that they “reflect back on that time,” and understand that the endurance and discipline they demonstrated in preparing for and participating in the ceremony taught them that they could accomplish whatever they set their minds to, that they could do anything.
Chi migwetch (big thanks), Katie and Trinity, for this first-hand account of Trinity’s Flower Dance Ceremony. We love sharing traditional teachings about menstruation because, as Katie put it, “Getting your moon makes you sacred; it is not something to be ashamed of. When you become a woman you have life-giving power inside of you.”
Navajo Preparatory School
Farmington, New Mexico
Navajo Preparatory School is a college preparatory school, fully sanctioned by the Navajo Nation since 1991. It recruits some of the best and brightest Navajo Nation students of the Navajo Nation, teaching students about life, science, beauty, songs, languages and harmony. We at The Kwek Society treasure the opportunity to provide its students supplies, because these efforts increase students’ sense of dignity, ease access issues, and reduce the financial impact on students’ families in obtaining these essential products. We appreciate nurse Kandice’s supportive approach to period care, and love hearing that students visiting from other schools for sports and other activities are excited to find period care items readily available to them!
Kandice and one of her students restocking period supplies.
Pads Across America, Wildhorse Foundation, and Be Prepared Period
In August, Pads Across America and Wildhorse Foundation each gifted us $20,000 to purchase pads. Our funding proposals highlighted the value we’d obtain by purchasing pads from our friends at Be Prepared Period, which offers discounted, organic pads to nonprofit organizations. We are crazy grateful for these generous donations! Since August, we’ve restocked a dozen schools, including Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Chemawa Indian School in Oregon, with pads purchased with the granted funds
Pads Across America gave us almost $7,000 in support early this year. We are thrilled to have their confidence and this recent, additional funding! Wildhorse Foundation is a new funder for us; its funds come from The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, situated in northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. We are one of over 1,500 organizations that have received project funding from the foundation.
If you have connections with funders that might support us – including foundations associated with sovereign Native Nations – please let us know!
Pam Vrooman
Dr. Pam Vrooman joined The Kwek Society Board in December 2022. She had followed the organization’s accomplishments and was inspired by its inclusivity and tangible work addressing period poverty. Pam has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Tulsa. She brings to us her grant writing/evaluation experience and is committed to expanding The Kwek Society’s reach across Turtle Island.
Pam is a proud member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and works as a psychologist in private practice with an emphasis on decolonizing therapy practices. She performs with Dewegen Kwek, an all-woman tribal hand drum group, and is a member of Matriarch Oklahoma, a community group empowering Native women/2Spirit/Nonbinary individuals. She serves on Matriarch’s MMIW Scholarship and Fundraising Committees.
In her spare time, Pam is a voracious reader and enjoys her monthly Native American Literature Book Club. She also loves creative writing, beading, gardening, foraging with an emphasis on indigenous plants, and spending time with her husband, grandchildren, and three giant dogs.
Be sure to check out our swag shop! We’ve added these new t-shirt designs that we think you’ll love. All profits fuel our work!
We hope you’ll visit our How to Help page for volunteer and donation ideas, including links for giving to us one-time or monthly. Do you like to use GooglePay or Venmo when donating? It’s easy to do that, by accessing the link to ActBlue Charities. We are grateful for each and every donation!
The Kwek Society, incorporated in Virginia, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN # 82-4369803). Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Our financial statement is available on written request from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Office of Charitable and Regulatory Programs, PO Box 1163, Richmond, Virginia 23218. Our Candid/Guidestar report can be found here.
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