Buy Dana Marie Tellefson a coffee

Tansi

My name is Dana I am a Plains Cree/Metis, neurodivergent/chronically ill mama to a beautiful 5 year old girl and a caregiver to my partner who recently became disabled when our family contracted covid-19-delta in 2021. My partner fell deathly ill, and was put into a medically induced coma for 3 months. He miraculously survived despite all medical professionals telling me he was going to die. He overcame many medical adversities such as lung collapse, multiple organ failure, triple cardiac arrest, and becoming septic due to medical malpractice. After 7 months in the hospital he became disabled from muscle atrophy and extreme nerve damage. My partner returned home in February of 2022 and it was immensely difficult for us to navigate our new lives with his disabilities and my newfound role of caregiver. One year after all this we were demovicted for the 3rd time in just a few short years. Our little family was living in our camper from May of 2023 till mid October, 2023 due to the housing crisis in so called vancouver. After spending the spring/summer travelling around westen canada, we parked our camper on a rental property in Maple Ridge, the house is very old, has been vacant for a long time and was ransacked by people looking to make money off copper. As a result we have no access to running water or proper electrical hookups (including heat) until we get the house back to liveable conditions, which has been very challenging on our disablity income and no help from the landlord - (hes cutting us a really good rent deal to do the work ourselves). We have gone from enduring freezing cold temperatures, to extreme heat, back to freezing cold and steadily dropping temperatures. We have struggled through the forest fires this last summer with no way to protect ourselves from the dense smoke. This has been very detrimental to the health of our family as we all have long covid, it has been especially hard on myself as I suffer from asthma ontop of my mental illnesses and other chronic illnesses. This has been a very trying few years for us, yet we persevere.

This is the reality for 90% of Indigenous folk in so called canada. We are stuck with surviving off the bread crumbs of settlers. My family does a lot of good work for our community and our love of the community. Unfortunately in a corporate, capitalist society love does not provide. So I ask of those who can afford to, to give funds directly to Indigenous folk trying their best just to survive.

Hay hay 🙌🏽