Remember a few weeks back when Nezua Limon Zolagrafik-Jonez put up a post called Christmas for a Wounded Pretty Bird? The short: a women’s shelter on the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota, which helps Native women who have suffered physical or sexual abuse, got some fundraising help from the Net to get a shelter up and running.

In October some bastard stole everything out of the place and burned it down.

So the word spread—Pretty Bird Woman House needed help. They figured it up and set a goal of $70,000, which would get them a new building, furnishings, a few month’s salary for everybody while waiting on more grant money, etc. It was a figure of impossible luxury and thought to be impossible.

Happy New Year, folks. They now have, according to AndyT over at dKos, raised nearly $80,000 with more still coming in.

’Scuze me, I am having a hard time typing, I seem to have something in my eye.  Read more 

YOU MAY RECALL, I posted a request for Olbermann last week or so, passing on the wish/hope/dream that one person in the Native American comunidad expressed for a greater level of exposure of their particular need.  Read more 

OLBERMANN, I already know you read me, dawg. Stop LYIN’. And we all know you are down with tha populace, and have been a beacon of hope to many of the voiceless. You have put that pretty mug in front of the camera and scoffed forth many important statements on many crucial topics. (The War on Billoism is fun to watch, too.) So yeah. We’re in this together, and even tho you iz da elite, you have positioned yourself in the endzone of social justice lately. Please push your envelope (sorry to abandon the football metaphor, I roused it in your honor, but I just feel too damn corny to continue), let’s get that Olbermann® brand up there with the hardcore truth-to-powers, let’s get all Historical on their asses. Let’s bring attention to an epidemic of violence and poverty among those who have already suffered too much at the hands of this nation’s “development” (forgive the gross euphemism, indigenous friends, I’m trying to butter up Olbermann sssh).

Keith, you and I don’t need to quibble at the ubiquity of violence that seeks women in our culture. We know it is a reality. And in the American Indian Reservations, this violence flourishes in disproportionate numbers. And consequences for those who would harm these women—as well as protection and justice—withers, caught between indifference, legal complications, and/or hostility. There are at least shelters on-rez for them. It’s not a cure. But it is something. A place to go to be safe, to learn, to find some comfort and figure out what to do next.

Except when there is no money for such a place. Then, where could these women hope to find help?  Read more