SHA Winter 2006 Newsletter

The 35th Anniversary Benefit at Belladonna
was a roaring success, standing room only. Luisah Teish did a beautiful blessing, Matu Feliciano drummed, my sister Julie Hammond played harp and guitar and sang in Gaelic, and Arisika Razak performed one of her inspired, liquid dances. We saw some magnificent new images in the SHA collection, ranging from Taino carvings of the Caribbean to the embroidered symbols of the Eurasian Chuvash; African resistance to slavery in Surinam and Haiti; female shamans of Nepal; masterpieces of Nok clay sculpture from Nigeria; and Korean crone goddesses and dragon-riding women.

Our beautiful silver-on-black T-shirts
came out in June. They read: The Suppressed Histories Archives: Real Women, Global Vision, with beautiful statues of women from Nigeria, Pakistan, Ecuador, China, Mexico, Iraq, Spain and Indiana. T-shirts are still available by mail order, for $15-20 sliding scale, plus $3 shipping, in sizes M-- 2X. (Sorry, 3X and S are sold out for this run.) See a picture here.

Tax-deductible donations
to the Archives are now available! via our new fiscal sponsor, the long-time lesbian journal Sinister Wisdom. (Check them out at www.sinisterwisdom.org/ ).
Checks must be made out to Sinister Wisdom, but make sure to put Suppressed Histories in the memo line (lower left hand corner) -- very important, so they know it is for the Archives and not to SW itself. If you don't need the tax deduction, please make checks out to Max Dashu. All donations can be mailed to Max Dashu, PO Box 3511, Oakland CA 94609.

Please consider supporting The Suppressed Histories Archives -- at this crucial moment, as we prepare to begin publishing books in 2006 -- and thanks again to those who have already made donations. As 2005 comes to an end, this is your chance to get a tax deduction while making a difference. The Archives receives no grants or institutional support, so your help is necessary to get this information out there.

Thanks to our 2005 interns!
With the help of Inhui Lee and Sarah Klebanoff, the long process of cataloguing the Archives' massive slide collection has begun. The long-range goal is to get every image entered into a searchable database, so that information can be accessed by date, country and region, and by categories such as shamans, elders, rebels, writers; or manuscripts, statues, temples, ceramics and symbols. We have openings for a new round of interns, to catalogue and assist with slide photography, mounting and labelling.

The Suppressed Histories Series went on the road
to Massachusetts, upstate New York, Oregon, and southern California, for starters. I presented the keynote address at a conference of the New Jersey Coalition for Battered Women at Rutgers, and was a featured speaker at the Matriarchal Studies Congress in San Marcos, Texas; the Daughters of Diana Gathering in the Wisconsin Dells, and the Shamanism Conference in San Raphael. And I showed Goddess Cosmologies at the inaugural ritual of the Goddess Temple of Orange County (yes, you read that right) in Irvine. (More about these and other 2005 events at http://www.suppressedhistories.net/events.html )

In California
Women's History Month showings of Women's Power were sponsored by a women of color sorority at Stanford and by a law firm in San Francisco, both of which were enthusiastically received. I guest-taught several classes at California Institute for Integral Studies and at New College, and for the fifth year, co-taught _Rites and Symbols of Female Spirituality_ at JFK University with Arisika Razak. The ongoing series continued at Change Makers for Women (Oakland, CA), winding up for the year with a wide-ranging discussion on the origins of patriarchy. The global Patriarchies show /group discussions continues in 2006.

Books are coming!
After all this activity, I am back to writing, hard at work on Mother-Right and Gender Justice, which if all goes as planned, will be out in May. Advance orders are discounted ($15 plus $3 shipping, made out to Max Dashu, at PO Box 3511 Oakland CA 94609). Some work-in-process excerpts are posted at http://www.suppressedhistories.net/matrix/matrix.html

Exciting new material is turning up, most recently on mother-right traditions in northeast Africa. The most dramatic involves a group that is not only matrilineal, but was led out of slavery en masse by a female shaman during the 1800s. New additions to the Matrix section of the website will be added as writing progresses.

Secret History of the Witches
is temporarily on the back burner, while Mother-Right is on the fire and while some technical problems get solved with the old MS files.

Gifts!
Prints, notecards and magnets of Max's art are available by mail order, and we are now set up to accept credit cards (orders taken over the phone, not online). Visit http://www.maxdashu.net to see the newly redesigned site. New designs are in play, including prints of Doreen Valiente's Charge of the Goddess and Allat Amulet, and lots of new magnets. They will be going up on the site gradually.

Special thanks go out to:
Susan Levinkind for bringing about our new fiscal sponsorship by Sinister Wisdom; Sarah Klebanoff for her work in brining the T-shirts to fruition; to Sarah Cohen of Change Makers and Jodi and Andrew at Belladonna for hosting SHA events, as well as to Briana Kaufmann, Peter and Bear. Thanks to the Nubian Diva Anniitra Ravenmoon and the extraordinaire Bridget Webb for producing events down south, with a shout-out to Letecia Layson for facilitating connections. And thanks to forest-defender Karen Beasley, the wilden Ellen Greenlaw, and to Kendra Morrigan and Katya Blissenbach of Sophia Sanctuary, for producing the events up north. Thanks most of all to Nava Mizrahhi, for her staunch and unstinting support of the Archives.

For justice and peace
May the next year bring peace, somehow, and if it does not, let it bring consciousness, action, and change. An end to torture, to oiligarchic wars, and to the barbaric and racist death penalty. May we find ways to stop the death toll of immigrants on the border and the serial killings of women in Juarez (See http://www.amigosdemujeres.org/ and in Spanish, http://mujeresdejuarez.org/). May we bring an end to violence against women everywhere in the world, and create a rising of support for the violated and the hopeless and despised; the sustainers of life, the mothers and caregivers, healers, the farmers and farmworkers who feed us, the elders and the at-risk youth; support and thanks for the defenders of Earth, the indigenous nations and environmentalists and all carriers of ancient and future wisdom. May we make it so. Somehow!

Max Dashu
Suppressed Histories Archives

The 35th Anniversary Newsletter of the Archives is online here.