a couple of Kickstarters (or Indiegogo)

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It’s going to be interesting to watch how well crowdfunding fares over the next few years. I’m getting more and more pleas to donate to or help promote various projects — enough that I’m very much having to pick and choose which ones I go with. You guys have been great about supporting the ones I’ve mentioned here before, but I don’t want to burn out your goodwill.

So, with that in mind, these three are all projects I actually have a personal desire to see succeed:

Pe’ Sla: Help Save Lakota Sioux Sacred Land — this one was launched when a sacred site in the Black Hills was put up on the auction block by the landowner. It’s since been taken down from auction, but according to the updates, the Great Sioux Nation is in private negotiation to buy as much of the land as they can. This is a Flexible Funding campaign, which means they get the donated funds even if they don’t reach their goal; it’s also worth noting that the crowdfunding is in addition to the money being put up by the tribes themselves. So the project helps take some of the burden off them/expand how much they can purchase and protect. Given the history in this country of fucking over indigenous groups by taking their land, this is a nice, direct way to help do the right thing.

The Gamers: Hands of Fate — on a less serious and political note . . . but only partly, I guess. I linked to this one before, but as part of a link dump, with very little explanation. To go into more detail: as described in this update, the filmmakers are actively concerned with and interested in doing something about the problems with gender in the gaming community. I quite enjoyed the first two movies in the series (the first on in particular is a hilarious tour through all kinds of good ol’ bad tropes in D&D), so I’m hoping this one gets the last bit of funding it needs to happen.

Electric Velocipede — finally, a small one for the magazine Electric Velocipede, which published my short story “Selection” some years back. They’re a quirky little market, and about halfway to their goal, which will fund them for the next four issues (i.e. a year).

0 Responses to “a couple of Kickstarters (or Indiegogo)”

  1. janni

    I find that for kickstarters the project has to be doing something I actively consider needed in the world: serving an underserved audience, giving unheard voices a place to be heard, that sort of thing. Simply “I want to publish my cool story” isn’t quite enough, unless it’s a story I have other reasons to really want to hear.

    The Lakota one is the latest one that I’ve had that feeling that I clearly need to support it–as a citizen of this country, living on its land; as a writer concerned with sense of place; as a Southwesterner who knows that one place is not like another, and that if a place is your place you can’t simply move yourself to another place and still be whole. (Once I moved here, and got that, I had a whole new and disturbing take on the scope just what we did, when we shuttled Native American tribes off to reservations.) Lots of friends pointing me to this one, and I appreciate the reminders, which have helped see to it that I do it.

    • Marie Brennan

      There’s an academic article — though now that I look it up, I see there’s a book as well — called “Wisdom Sits in Places,” by Keith Basso, that speaks very eloquently about the interlacing of culture and landscape (specifically in the context of the Apache). If you haven’t already read it, you absolutely should.

      • janni

        Oooh. Yes. I should.

        Basso’s name keeps coming up for the Apache culture research for the current book. Said research being a rather small part of the overall book, but still.

        And this sounds like it also ties to a lot of things that have just been becoming growing concerns in my writing in general.

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