There's a chance I might be traveling there several times in the next few months (work related).

My good friend and artist  JamminBison is making some really awesome ones.

Info below:
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7526507/

Go!

He is in a very desperate situation that involves a dangerous home environment. Please try and donate something. Every little bit can go a long way. Whatever you can send would be greatly appreciated!

www.furaffinity.net/journal/7418078/


ALSO, if you can, please spread this journal around!

"Americans will fight harder to defend native [stereotypes] than they will to defend the lives of actual Native people whose land they live on."

Hear me complain about New England weather in real time. But in all seriousness, I'm on there a lot more as of late. Trying to raise more awareness on Native issues especially; having conversations, and more.

https://twitter.com/Tonya_Song

I haven't been active on FA as of late. My music work has been very busy which is of course a good thing. I do however have a job prospect right now that is more than just a hope it seems; and it would get me out of Boston. I'm in talks with a potential new employer about teaching music, on an Indian Reservation in South Dakota (undefined which reservation they'd place me in). I've been in email communication with them back and forth and yesterday had a phone conversation with them, so it's a pretty serious possibility at this point. From the sound of it, they're really lacking applicants because of the location. While on the phone yesterday, I did address to them the fact that I am transgender, and that I was up to date with the anti-trans laws being pushed through legislation in South Dakota, and that I know the risks. They made me feel a bit more relaxed when they offered to put me in contact at some point with one of their other employees who are lgbt. To be clear, this job wouldn't start until summer 2017 so I have a lot of time to think about this, but as of now, this is looking very promising.

Needless to say, I feel I can do a lot in a job like this. I want to be that inspiration for Native youth that I didn't get growing up. I want Native youth to know they can do anything they want to be, and encourage them in ways I wasn't. I want to empower them. I feel I can do so much for my community than I am able to do right now out here in Massachusetts.

The other consideration for me is that, if I go along with this, this job is going to be my ENTIRE life. Everything else (except maybe composing) is going to be put on hold, because there won't be anything else I'll be able to do in that geographically isolated area. It's a very serious consideration. I'll have to see how it goes, but I'm planning way ahead and I look forward to making a decision! As much as I want to move back to Arizona, I want to keep this opportunity close to me.

I unfortunately don't have time to write a long review of the two cons which I went to back-to-back but I just wanted to say that I had a great time at both these cons and thank you to everyone who worked to put them together. It feels weird, after two weekends in a row of furry to come back to "real life". I had a great time meeting everyone there too.

Happy another cycle rotation of the patriarchal calendar everyone. And we're off by a few minutes, but ehhhh we'll just overlook that, as Russell Means would say. I really am not one to do this but here are some of the greatest positives of this past year for me.

#1: and biggest one: I came out as transgender early 2015 and it did marvels to me. I used to deal with much heavier depression than I do now, and dealing with my inner demons has always been difficult; but coming out liberated me in so many ways. I don't have episodes of depression anywhere near as often and I am much more comfortable with my own life. Things haven't been perfect but they have certainly gotten much better.

#2: I became more active on Twitter and as a result I started talking with amazing minds about topics I didn't much get to talk about much, being out here; particularly topics about Native issues. It has been very enlightening to watch their writings, as they've thought about these topics for much longer than I have, and my mind is expanding and it feels empowering.

#3: I got to travel A LOT this year, with one of the highlights being my trip to the Dakotas and meeting many new friends on those trips.

#4: I've learned to assert myself better than ever this past year and am empowered. That confidence also sort of came along with my coming out as trans.

#5: I was interim director of a concert choir and did so well that it resulted in them hiring me as their permanent director. It has been the biggest move in my career as of yet!

#6: Maybe a little more vague, but I'm blooming into the person I want to be and need to be. I'm so much further than where I was this past January in terms of how mature I am. When I think about all the demons I've been fighting in my life, I used to feel so helpless, but now I feel powerful instead. Even this past January I still struggled a lot more than I do now. It's amazing how a year changes a person.


I could go on longer but I think I will keep it there. With all this positivity it isn't to say that I didn't have very difficult moments, in fact, I had many very difficult moments; still episodes of depression and still awful episodes of ptsd though luckily not too many. 2016/the next chapter of my life is promising. It promises to have both agonizing pain and great victory, and I am ready for both!

I'd like to know!

Yesterday after rehearsal I came out as transgender to the orchestra director where I play. I was still attending rehearsals dressed as male but yesterday I decided it was time to come out. I had a feeling that the director, being the chill guy that he is, would be okay with it. I told him, and it went as good as I could have hoped for. He even said "Good for you!" enthusiastically. He then told me to email him my new name and pronouns to help him remember. After I said all that and went back to my car, I literally started weeping in joy. It was huge for me. While I work in several different music groups for work, this is the first workplace where I'll be able to be myself. I'm still a long ways from being able to be a woman full time but I'm getting there. It is in moments like this when I have to say I am grateful for those before me who fought to make this possible; those people that have been and are still fighting for trans rights and making us visible and getting rid of the negative stigma that it used to have. I feel great and I feel liberated, even though i still have a ways to go.

Hello everyone, I just got a major concert done recently which was a huge one for my career. It is easily the most massively successful concert I've done to date and my name is being talked about in a very positive way. It was a Christmas concert. With that in mind, I'm going to be uploading the songs we performed to FA over the next few days. I hope you very much enjoy the program.

Second thing I want to do is to give a shout out to a charity that I indirectly work for during this time of year. That charity is Toys for Tots.

Toys for Tots was started by the US Marine Corps and does a lot of great work around the country. With some charity organizations not being transparent about how their resources are used, Toys for Tots is one of the most trustworthy charities out there. The best part of it is that they don't work on their own but rather work with more local organizations to better serve each and individual community. The community center where I volunteer during this time of year works with Toys for Tots. What our community center does is wrap and distribute gifts based on what less fortunate ask for. We basically get their "Santa" letters at our center and go from there.

There are multiple ways to contribute. You can either donate by giving a toy to any of the many drop-off boxes around the country or give a monetary donation that helps with the operation costs.

More information:
http://www.toysfortots.org/default.aspx

Some suggestions we give out from our community center if you're donating toys:
-Donate something durable that will last in a child's life.
-Don't donate the trendiest thing on the market such as the superhero that happens to be in theatres. You want the gift to be timeless if at all possible.
-If possible give a toy that has educational value as well.
-Balls such as soccer/basketballs or just regular play balls are always great as they help keep a child physically active.

If you have other suggestions, please feel free to add them in the comments. Put a smile on a child's face this season. It is very easy to give. No, Toys for Tots is not paying me to give them a signal boost, I am doing this on my own because I believe in their work.

I've been a professional musician for a about 7 years now. Being a professional musician is something difficult to achieve because it is an industry that is extremely competitive no matter what the genre. Many very talented people are never able to break through into the industry. Add this up with the fact that nowadays many unqualified musicians are somehow managing to get into the industry because they happen to have connections. That's just the name of the game really. It is one of the reasons I quit working in Hollywood after 6 months of working under a film composer; because of the politics involved. That and many times you get treated like shit in Hollywood.

With all that in mind, I've been largely fortunate as to how far I've gotten and what I get to do as a musician, and that coming out of poverty that I am now able to provide for myself on music alone. I've persevered even through many rejections; and rejections are also just a part of being a musician. They happen and you just have to lift yourself back up.


So here's what happened to me yesterday...


I had recently submitted an idea for an orchestra piece to an orchestra in hopes of getting commissioned to write a piece of music for them. This was possibly my best idea yet for an orchestra piece and fit specifically what they were looking for and was going to be an excellent fit for the concert program they were going to put it in. I wasn't the only one to pitch an idea so the possibility was always there that I might not get picked, but I had wow'd the board listening to our piece ideas. As time went on, the board was communicating with me and hinting that they were going to go with my idea. The orchestra director himself had personally come up to me and said he was remarkably impressed with my music composing skills. Getting selected for this would have been a massive step for my career as a composer and as a musician in general. It would have gotten me much closer to putting me on the map.

You probably know where this is going. Last night I received the email announcing who was selected by the orchestra to write a piece. They immediately gave the composer's name and their background and the person is very qualified as well. I just had so much invested in my idea and had come up with something so fitting for what they asked for that I am just wondering what this composer's idea was that they won. I do however know that the winner deserved it, and I do not want to sound like I think no one can be better than me. Besides, what made me think I had a great chance is not so much my skill level against all the other composers but rather how well I pitched the idea for what they were looking for in a piece. That's not quite where it ends either, as a week from today I have to go (to be a good sportsman) to the announcement of the winner as that composer talks about their idea to everyone. I am going to congratulate the winner, which hurts to do to be honest, but I'm doing it.

I feel like I was punched in the gut. The hard part is that this isn't an isolated moment. The reason I titled this journal "The Music Industry is Brutal Sometimes" is because I've worked hard making connections left and right wherever I can, especially as a person who neither comes from a musical family, a family with connections, nor was born with a silver spoon in her mouth; so I have to make my own connections. But it's been way too often that I meet someone who says they are impressed with either my composing or my piano skills, or some other musical skill, and outwardly states that they're going to want me for some sort of big gig and then just stop answering emails and phone calls. I wish people were just up front. If you're not interested in my work, that's fine, but don't hint that you're interested and want to hire me for something and then just drop me down a cliff. I won't lie, moments like this sometimes make me want to quit music and do something else, but I have not quit after years of rejections and disappointments. The thing is, I can't forget how far I've made it already, and how much music work I do that is so greatly appreciated. I can't forget that I am able to put a roof over my head doing just music. This is just the reality of the professional music world, get used to sometimes extreme rejection and just keep picking yourself up. I have a lot of other positive happenings in my career right now so I can't lament this forever, even though it hurt a lot and was a massive opportunity I didn't get. I just have to keep moving on.

It's supremely ironic that states are pushing to stop refugees looking for a better life from being welcomed. The whole premise of this NATIONAL holiday that everyone gleefully celebrates by stuffing the hell out of themselves with excessive food is that you were welcomed as refugees by the Indian nations and were "thankful" for their hospitality and basically saving their lives. What do you think is going to happen? That they're going to treat you like you treated the Indians? oops... To be fair though, it's kinda hard for them to top what was done to our Native nations.

I'm reluctant to write this journal but I feel I need to now.

Here is the most important thing to do right now: to keep the victims and their loved ones in our thoughts, prayers, meditations etc. as they go through this difficult time. That is priority number one and we can not let ourselves loose sight of them. Sadly, many already are loosing sight even here on FA.

Unless you are French and understand France's history and social dynamics, your uneducated, unsolicited opinion about how France should respond to this is doing more harm than good. Also, stop using the tragedy that occurred yesterday to make a political point, or use the mourning victims as a prop to bolster other opinions of yours. This isn't about what you think.

Please have a cooler head, especially out of respect for those who mourn today. They deserve better.


I WILL delete comments on this journal and/or block if I need to.

As the title reads, at times I feel like I just need to open up and say what's on my mind. This past weekend one of my cousins passed away at only 23 years old. Because of the dynamics in my family, it took a long time to figure out what had happened and I heard it through Facebook. It seems he had a very minor disease but because of depression he didn't care to get it checked out and it escalated to the point where it killed him. Needless to say, it's a major shock to loose someone that young in your family and we're all sort of trying to make sense of it.

As if that wasn't enough, the next day two friends of mine (separately) tried to kill themselves. Both are thankfully okay, but to have come close to loosing them was difficult to digest. Both of them deal with trauma they experienced growing up on the reservation, and both go through depression and anxiety. I could relate to all those things as I've gone through them and a while back attempted to take my own life as well. It's just too heavy to deal with. If you don't go through it yourself, it's hard to put in words how much it's extreme emotional pain that feels just way too frequent. The fact that this happened to my friends just triggered my own trauma and my entire body has been feeling weak and trembling every so often. I have a hard time motivating myself to get out of bed and suddenly can remember all those horrible feelings that makes one want to take their own life. I don't feel like eating, I don't feel like even turning on the TV. Once I get an episode like this, I'm either too unmotivated to do anything or even scared to live.

It just so happened I had a therapist appointment on Monday and I was able to talk about all that was going on in my life. She helped me navigate through my trauma but also helped me realize how much anger I hold in, and made me realize it is anger that I hold toward so many people who had wronged me when I was defenseless, and how much I would love to meet them face to face now that I can actually defend myself. I'm angry because I just want my friends to be well and instead we all seem to deal with these feelings of mental torture. I'm angry because trauma and suicide are way too common around my community, the Native community, and I just want our youth to have opportunities to flourish. I've taught music and dance to youth before but I wish I could still do more. Ultimately it's impossible for me alone to remove them from all that holds them down and hurts them.

Like everything else, I'll get through it. I've sadly been through worse and this one will be no different. Divide already tried to take me and failed. This morning I feel way better than yesterday already. I'm getting there little by little. The one thing I learn out of all this is to just keep loving and laughing. It is the only way to deal with the emotional pain. The pain is always there as a constant reminder, it never goes away, nothing makes it go away. You simply learn how to cope through it. I'm still not feeling at my best but getting progressively better, at least until I get another episode, but I'll survive that one too. I've gone through hell and back and nothing is going to stop me now.

Over the years, I've worked really hard to create friendships with people who hold views that are jarringly different than mine. I still believe that this is a good thing for people to do, if you can do it. It creates much needed dialogue for an ever more divided society. I, however, am done with that. Too many times I've been betrayed, insulted, and silenced. It happened that every time I wanted to build on these friendships, they somehow end in me being vilified for believing what I believe, usually with the use of straw man arguments. They use those arguments to claim that people like me are supposedly the culprits for the issues in society, or even implying that I am causing harm to my own community whether it be trans people or Native people or something else; and they blame me for being the one causing division. It's impossible to talk to people like this because I can never be anything but wrong to them. I can't talk to people who won't listen. The simple version is, I don't have the patience for it, but the thing is, I can't deal with these things because of trauma it brings up again sometimes. I'm not built to debate because I'll get triggered easily. Either way, most of the time I find that people don't want a fair debate anyway. Look, I tried. It's not for me.

Despite what people might say about me, I always make the greatest attempt to give people the respect they deserve, not only the respect but the love they deserve. Those of you who know me know I love you guys, I want to give that love. As a good friend of mine said to me, “When you know struggle, when your life is struggle, inherently you love hard.” If you want friendship, I will give you all I can give. I'll be there for you when you are down and will always be open to hear you. I can still be friends with you if our perspectives differ don't get me wrong. Just know that conversations are going to be difficult, because I don't want to go back and forth trying to shut each other out. As for my friendships, my communities, and my families. I'll be here to love, even if I dont' get the love in return.

Today was the first day I went out in public for the first time as a woman since coming out as transgender earlier this year. I'm having all sorts of emotions. For the most part it went very well. I only got stared at once at a store by an employee, but I sort of took that positively anyway. What I realized is that a lot of people are too involved in their own world to pay attention to others. Many passed by me but didn't notice because they were staring into their phones.

I wore a very simple shirt and pants, didn't overdo it. I didn't wear makeup. I wore my women's frames glasses which help me pull off the look, and did my hair in a different way than I usually do today. I thought I did a pretty good job on using my woman's voice. When I was in public and doing a normal back and forth with like a cashier, I was fine, but when I went out with friends I was progressively letting my voice fall back down to male voice mode. That's just something I'm going to need to work on.

I look forward to the day I can be a woman full time. For now, this was a good start. I don't think I can pull it off just yet. Besides, this is a process. It's why it's called a "transition". I have to be patient, but I'm getting there, and it feels good to be me. It feels good to be Tonya.

My next milestone is a bit more intimidating: I'm going to come out to the orchestra director, of the orchestra where I'm a percussionist. I know he's the type of person who likely wouldn't have a problem with it. However, I'd also have to come out to the percussion section I work with. I'm excited for the day I perform at a concert, playing some great classical repertoire and see "Tonya" listed in the percussion section. That day will come in due time. For now, I am happy and excited for life. I am more hopeful than ever.

Go check them out! More music to come soon!

"Next time they call you P.C. remind them that U.S. history is P.C.: 'Settlers' instead of 'invaders.' 'Founded' instead of 'stolen.' Right..." -Simon Moya-Smith (Oglala Lakota)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KeCiHkk5P.....-Annotated.png

In summation: Halloween Indian costumes are not flattering, are not educational, are not good-spirited. All they do is contribute to the idea that we no longer exist and/or are some kind of mythical people; and that has serious consequences for our communities when we're trying to make our voices heard.

Even so, "Reservation Royalty" "Pocahottie" "Indian Giver", are you guys serious with these offensive names?


Lastly, so you know what our respectable culture actually looks like: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ9_-qbUYAAidpS.jpg

My flight just landed in Phoenix. Words can't describe how happy I am to be home, to see the desert again. There is still a stabbing pain over the chemical spill that isn't going to go away sadly but the good energy of my land is here. I'll be somewhat unresponsive in the next few days, particularly since some days will be spent on the reservation. I'll keep you guys updated and I promise I'll get back to uploading music soon. I know it's been a while since my last upload!

For those who hadn't heard the news about what happened in the southwest:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/navajo-nat.....R3nNAR.twitter

My heart is hurting because of this. This has potential to cause unspeakable damage and the EPA is withholding information from us telling us that they'll clean it up. It's not just drinking water the Navajo people need, but also water for crops and livestock. Farming season is right now and is only 4 months out of the year and the people rely on that revenue. Understand that water isn't as readily available as it is where you guys are. Many are scared for the future. Personally I fear that this will forcibly remove many from the reservation who have lived in the traditional way. This is a horrific nightmare. I have loved ones in that area and I'm worried for what the effects of this will be.

It may have been destined that my trip out there is next week, though I don't know what help I can do except pray really hard; and I beg all of you to pray for the sacred river and the Navajo people.

I just want to believe for once that society will start listening to us Indigenous people and what we say about environmental issues. They aren't a joke and aren't a political talking point, they're our ONLY FUTURE!! It's time you all wake up!

Comment below. There are some rooms available in the apartment I just got. You have to be cleared by me and the landlord and we gotta work it out ASAP since I'm leaving town in a week. Don't be offended please if I don't respond.

I'm basically being kicked out of my apartment and have been looking for a new one. Basically my roommate was dishonest about the last few weeks of my lease, I wasn't allowed to renew, and my roommate's dad is the landlord. The big reason I'm being forced to get out is so that my roommate can have her stoner friend move in. Now, I don't have a problem with people getting stoned, even in my presence. The issue is that that's all she ever does. It sucks so much that I'm loosing this apartment to this person and that there's nothing I can do now.

I pretty much have an apartment secured at the moment. At every place I looked at, I inquired if it was trans friendly. This place said that yes it is. It's hard to know for sure sometimes, but I had a good feeling about their sincerity. Tomorrow morning I'm calling to let them know I want the apartment (I saw it today). The biggest issue is the price. It's $100 more a month than my current apartment. That's kind of a big hit for me. So I'm not the happiest person right now. Hopefully they haven't sold it or I'll be in a more difficult situation of not having anywhere to live for a bit.

I was pretty optimistic about staying in Boston and these last few bumps have made me feel not as good about it. I'm really hoping this isn't a bad sign of things to come. I guess it's not like I haven't lived through worse, but I still regret the situation. Right now I'm just feeling like I want to go home. Luckily I am going home at the end of the month for a visit, and I am looking forward to spending time on the reservation and being disconnected from the rest of the world for a bit. This is too much bullshit to take in.

Landed back last night. I'll be writing a more extensive journal on all that I learned and experienced there. I already miss it! I'm so happy to have the opportunity to travel.