TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP
Welcome to the site of the 2025 Team Championship!
What is the Team Championship? A way to up our productivity through friendly competition! By joining your team’s Challenge, your progress becomes viewable to your team, and your progress will be counted toward your team’s average progress. Take the sorting quiz HERE and await assignment to one of our three teams!
This year’s theme is Seasons for Stories, inspired by Anishinaabe beliefs. The Anishinaabe split the year into five seasons that are based around the changes in nature and what can be done or needs doing.
Ziigwan is the early spring, the beginning of the year, as the ground starts to thaw but still freezes in the night. This is a time of letting go and letting things flow.
Minookimi is late spring, a time of soft earth and planting. It’s also when medicine is harvested, as this is when many medicinal plants are at their most potent.
Niibin is the summer, a season of plenty. There is an abundance of beauty and of food, and the longer days mean the ability to travel into new places. Summer brings the blessing of rains and thunder and of travel.
Dagwaagi is the fall. This is the time to plant the bushes and trees that will need to grow before winter and be ready for the spring, and to prepare the winter gardens of carrots and dark greens that grow in the winter season. It’s also a season of fasting and focusing on inner growth, like the trees that drop their leaves to focus on root growth.
Biboon is the winter, the season we’re entering now. This is a time of rest, and the power of stopping. It is also the season of stories. This is the time the Anishinaabe can tell stories about their most revered figures without those spirits listening in. Whether it’s out of respect for gossiping about the spirits or because the storytellers don’t want to bring the subject of their tales any closer, the winter is the only safe time to tell certain stories.
It’s a perfect tie in to us and our challenge of telling the stories we don’t have time to tell the rest of the year, of taking the things we can’t talk about the rest of the year and putting them down on paper (or in fabric, or in clay, or whatever material you’re using to complete your project).
These seasons are marked by the travel of the stars and the interactions of the main figures in Anishinaabe mythos. The Anishinaabe have their own names for the constellations, and the ones we’ve chosen to represent our teams this year are the Ajijaak (the Crane, referred to as Cygnus in Western astrology), the Mishi-bizhiw Gaa-ditibaanowe’ (the Lynx, made up of parts of what are Leo and Hydra in Western astrology), and the Mooz (the Moose, referred to as Pegasus in Western astrology). Each of these characters represents a clan, which originated in the night sky and to which each person returns when they leave this earth.
To honour the Anishinaabe people, we at First Draft Detroit will be including specific fundraising for an Indigenous charity aligned with our creative focus. Look for donation opportunities in the form of raffle lots containing items from Native-owned businesses and/or made by Native creators. And you can find additional reading specifically on Anishinaabe culture (which we’ve used for research for this year’s championship theme) here!
Once you’ve been assigned to Team Crane, Team Lynx, or Team Moose, it’s time to officially join the challenge! Join the Team Challenge HERE (you did create a project on Pacemaker, right? Right?), and make sure to also add your project to your team’s specific challenge (Crane, Lynx, or Moose)! Progress is charted every night by your devoted board members and posted to the discord.
The discord also has team-specific channels! Chat with your fellow teammates, share gifs, and gently smacktalk the other teams in the all-team channel!