2021-02-19 Announcements for

Meeting Calendar:

Day	Date	Time	Event
Sat	Feb 20	7:00 p.m.	Story Telling. For Zoom link, email Zoom [at] ConcordFriendsMeeting [dot] org (subject: %E2%80%9CStory%20Telling%E2%80%9D%20Zoom%20Link%20Request) .  Make note of the correct hour.
Sun	Feb 21	10:15 a.m.	Meeting for Worship. For Zoom Link, email Zoom [at] ConcordFriendsMeeting [dot] org (subject: %E2%80%9CMeeting%20for%20Worship%E2%80%9D%20Zoom%20Link%20Request) .
Sat	Feb 27	8:30 a.m.	Earth Care Workshop
Sat	Mar  6	11:00 a.m.	QuakerSpring Gathering

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Concord Meeting History

Last time we sent out announcements Sara had provided an addition that was uploaded to the website.  That prompted Marian Baker to send more. Thank you, Mark, for making these additions. https://www.concordfriendsmeeting.org/HistoryOfFriendsInConcordNH [2].

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Earth Care Activists

Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting and Acadia Friends Monthly Meeting invite you to an interactive workshop by zoom, Saturday, February 27, 2021, 8:30 a.m. to gather and 9 a.m. to begin – noon.  Earthcare, Call to Action, Empowerment and Engagement with personal journeys shared by Andy Burt, Jay O'Hara, Peter Garrett, Gray Cox.  Maine Activist Earthcare Friends will speak about their lives, their moments of insight, their growing concerns and anecdotes of success and failure.  A personal witness prepared by each speaker is attached below.  Get to know their work.

Margaret Marshall & MaineBob O’Connor, facilitators of today’s workshop, introduce us to their work.  Queries and levels of climate concern are included from the NEYM Earthcare Committee.  There will be two break out groups (3-5 people) in which each attender will share Earthcare concerns, hopes and intentions for 2021.

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QuakerSpring Gathering: Listening to the Inward Christ Together, Saturday March 6^th

• 11a.m. ET - Scripture reading (out of silent waiting)
• Noon - break / informal fellowship
• 12:30 - Meeting for Worship (moving into consideration of queries by those gathered)
• 2:30 (approx.) - closing & informal fellowship

Information & registration at https://quakerspring.org/ [3]

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from the Right Relationship Group

Note where this was published!

“They Asked for PPE and Got Body Bags Instead – She Turned Them Into a Healing Dress”

By Cecilia Nowell

February 4, 2021 Vogue

 

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In March, public health researcher Abigail Echo-Hawk (Pawnee) and her colleagues at the Seattle Indian Health Board reached out to their local and federal partners for more PPE so they could continue serving Washington’s Native population.  When they received a large package a few weeks later they were elated — until they opened it and found a stack of body bags inside.

“We’re not a hospital system.  We don’t have inpatient, we don’t have hospital beds.  If somebody died here, we would call an ambulance,” said Echo-Hawk.  “I went home and I just cried that night, which I unfortunately do often.”  To her, the body bags were a symbol of how little the United States values Native lives and a foreshadowing of the massive outbreaks that would take hold on reservations like the Navajo Nation.  In Native communities, the mortality rate from COVID has been nearly double that of the rate among white populations — revealing weaknesses in the Indian Health Service and putting Indigenous elders at risk.

The dress made from bodybags by Abigail EchoHawk.  Later, Echo-Hawk took some of the body bags home, where slowly, a vision emerged: She decided to transform one of the body bags into a traditional ribbon dress.  The dress would comment on the ways the pandemic has disproportionately impacted Native communities and honor the women whose lives have been put in danger by rising rates of domestic violence and assault.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, Native women are 10 times more likely to be murdered than women of other ethnicities.  Echo-Hawk’s team at the Urban Indian Health Institute, a division within the Seattle Indian Health Board, reports that Native women are also 2.5 times more likely to experience rape or sexual assault.  This tragedy has only increased during the pandemic.  In August, Debra O’Gara (Tlingit and Yup’ik), senior policy specialist at the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center published a press release outlining how COVID had exacerbated the long-standing problem.

Nine months after first bringing the body bags home, Echo-Hawk shared the final product on Instagram.  “I’ll never accept their body bags for our people,” she wrote in the caption, “all I will accept is a world where we are thriving, ever continuing.”

ARTICLE EDITED HERE. FOR FULL ARTICLE GO TO:

https://www.vogue.com/article/body-bag-native-ribbon-dress [4]