A reflection from our cofounder Mą̄xipį̄

I’ve always felt connected to water… and I know I’m not the only one.

From childhood memories at the river, to healing in moments of grief, to standing with our relatives at Standing Rock… water has always been there. She gives life. She listens. She holds us.

But today, our waters are under threat. Pollution, pipelines, and industry continue to harm our rivers, our relatives, and our people.

Protecting water isn’t just a movement… it’s a responsibility.

We do it through action, through teaching our children, through the choices we make, and through prayer.

Water is not a resource. She is a relative.

On this World Water Day, take time to learn, reflect, and stand for our waters.

Learn more here: https://www.unwater.org/our-work/world-water-day

Water is sacred. Water is life.

A reflection from our co-founder, Mą̄xipį̄.

As Ho-Chunk women, we come from matriarchs. Our clans, our names, our belonging, they once came through our mothers. We descend from women who survived removals, boarding schools, and policies meant to erase them. And still… they endured.

The Moon, Hāhewira, our “Night Luminary”, reminds us of that endurance. She waxes and wanes, but she is never gone. She shifts, but she always returns.

Right now, many of us are feeling the weight of political decisions being made about our bodies, our autonomy, and our futures. Indigenous women especially understand what it means to have systems attempt to control us while claiming it’s for our own good.

At the same time, within our own communities, we face lateral oppression, criticism, projection, and sometimes misuse of power often from the very men who benefit from the matriarchal systems our grandmothers upheld.

And still… we show up.

We show up for our children.

For our elders.

For our communities.

For our people.

Because our resilience, our big, soft hearts are what makes us Ho-Chunk.

Hāhewira reminds us that power does not have to be loud to be constant. That cycles are natural. That rest is sacred. That even through hardship, return is inevitable.

We are daughters of matriarchs. Of nation builders. Of women who held everything together when the world tried to tear it apart.

As a small team of two, we have been busy behind the scenes, building, creating, protecting our energy, but more content, more storytelling, more events are coming soon!

Stay tuned.

For the Ho-Chunk, the new year doesn’t begin on January 1st.

It begins when the Wakąja, the Thunderbirds return.

Like many Indigenous nations, we traditionally follow the moons and the natural cycles of the earth, not the Gregorian calendar. The return of the Wakąja marks the renewal of life. When the earth awakens, storms return, and a new cycle begins.

Winter is a sacred time for rest, reflection, and renewal, preparing us for the new year ahead.

As the Thunderbirds returns, so does life.

Mą̄ Cēk Gipįesge / Happy New Year.

- Hisgexjį Horak