I (Elana) am attempting to try a multi-state life, basing myself mostly on Munsee Lenape and Mohican land (NJ) with regular trips into other Munsee Lenape, Mohican, and Canarsie lands (NYC). The plan sounded fun, but the reality of frequent transitions reminds me that while change can be good, it quite often feels uncomfortable, untethering, and destabilizing. How do I have a relationship with the land when I can’t regularly greet the same bushes and trees? Plants like permanency, too: you may be able to repot or move them occasionally, but mostly they need a stable spot where they can put down roots in order to grow and thrive.
Musing on permanency naturally calls up the journey of a local organization with which SURJ-NYC’s Indigenous Solidarity working group has been growing our relationship. For more than five decades, the American Indian Community House (AICH) has served as a gathering place and cultural home for Indigenous people living in New York City. Through changing times, AICH has remained committed to strengthening community, honoring cultures, and creating opportunities for Native people to gather, connect, create, and thrive.
In March of this year, AICH moved into a new home at 234 West 39th Street in Manhattan. Having moved locations many times over the years, AICH leadership is hopeful that this space will be a place to nourish community and grow its offerings. After all, by the time AICH had been in the space for three months, it had already held 21 events with a total of 575 attendees, including First Foods Pantry distributions of Indigenous foods, Indigenous Futures/Indigenous Pathways programs for young adults navigating Native life in NYC, Women’s Talking Circles, and more.
We at SURJ-NYC-IS have supported fall fundraisers for AICH in the past, but this year feels especially meaningful with AICH’s new sovereign space. Their leadership isn’t shy about naming permanency as a priority, or that they see community as integral to reaching that permanency. Currently, monthly sustaining donors cover 40% of the space’s rent, which AICH’s donor newsletter, The Shoreline, called “a huge gift.” AICH would love for monthly donors to cover 100% of the rent, ideally by the end of this year — which feels like a perfect opportunity for the SURJ-NYC community to step up. Long before the gentrification that many of us have observed and even benefitted from, the first humans who lived where we do were forcibly removed — not to mention tortured, enslaved, and decimated by genocide. The concept of reparations as payment for past wrongs falls a bit flat to me in the context of cultures oriented around gift-giving and reciprocity — particularly as AICH is multitribal, not necessarily composed of the nations that originally lived here. What if, instead, we viewed movement of funds to AICH as reciprocity, acknowledging the sovereignty and power of Native folks who live in NYC, and being invited into their circle of allies in response? What if our gifts of funds resulted in the gift of experiencing Indigenous imagination, beauty, and solidarity first-hand?
Sign up to become a monthly donor to AICH here. Whether you can move $1/month or $1000, you’ll be invited into AICH’s story and helping Indigenous folks thrive in the city we all love.
With care,
SURJ NYC Indigenous Solidarity coordinators (Katharine, Elana, Sarah, Kristin, Alison, & Kyle)