Creepy Cabaret For A Cause: Healing Arrows at Askew

Healing Arrows has teamed up with Askew to host a “Creepy Cabaret” on Thursday, October 28th at 8 pm. The event features Boston comedian Kendra Dawsey, Queer Drag Bobby Fresh-King, Indigenous guitarist The Real Chris Kaz, and several other acts.

Healing Arrows for Indigenous Social Justice and Wellness is a Rhode Island grassroots group dedicated to advocacy, promotion, and education on issues of social justice for Indigenous Peoples. 

The event serves as a fundraiser for the Native Clemency Star Quilt Tour. The National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls- a Massachusetts-based organization- is assembling a clemency quilt, with the many names of incarcerated women in America woven into its fabric. Once created, the quilt will tour the country, bringing awareness about the conditions of prisons and advocating for the release of incarcerated women convicted of nonviolent crimes. Healing Arrows’ quilt contribution will feature the names of incarcerated Indigenous women in particular. 

Aleticia Kyle Tijerina, Executive Director and Co-founder of Healing Arrows, suggested that the vast majority of Indigenous women are often incarcerated because they are at the wrong place at the wrong time, or because their partners enlist their help in abetting their own criminal activity. As a result, Kyle Tijerina explained, there is a serious impact on women, their children, and the Indigenous community at large. Healing Arrows believes women can be better nurtured and brought into balance outside of prison walls.