CEP REFLECTION

RUBY STACEY
2017

I came to CEP knowing that I wanted to contribute to building social

capital within Seattle somehow. I was interested in placemaking and urban

design. I had just finished up two years of Americorps. The first year I did

environmental restoration work on Vashon Island, and the second year I worked

as a pedestrian advocate. I led a team in efforts to make the streets of Seattle

safer and easier for young students and their families to get to school. This work

felt important, but I was frustrated with the reasons that this work existed and

wanted to study so that I could work towards more transformational change in

our society.

I turned to the learning community of CEP. A program that offered a self-

guidance and a flexible curriculum. I was also excited to have been accepted to a

program that was in Seattle as my family lives close enough for me to keep in

touch easily. I felt committed to staying near family and doing work where my

people have lived for thousands of years.

Junior year I dived into a landscape architecture course to see if it was the

right fit. I enjoyed the demands of the class in that pushed my skills in terms of

creativity. I think that I really like that, however, at the time I thought that I could
produce more meaningful designs and ideas in that field if I spent time studying

the politics of race, more specifically the experiences of indigenous peoples. I

took a class on the relationships between race, nature and power. Then I took a

class on indigenous resistance and resurgence. These classes gave meaning to

my experiences as a have native person. I have found that throughout my time in

CEP I have had to actively seek out classes and experiences that I consider

pertinent to my education and that I could use in the future. I know that to have

developed that skill here will serve me well in the future when I need to speak up

and advocate for my cause.

Near the end of my junior year I did something that I never thought I would

do/deserved to do and applied to study abroad. In late June I set off to Vietnam

and the Philippines for my first trip to Asia. Learning how to travel in a foreign

place my friend and I traveled up the coast of Vietnam for 3 weeks. After that, I

met up with my study abroad program based out of Manila in the Philippines. I

was interested in studying in the Philippines because the Comparative History of

Ideas Program focused on American Occupation and the effects of that

colonization.

Within my study abroad I was confronted with many the harsh realities

colonialism and capitalism. It seems that most people live in extremes there.

Most people living in extreme poverty. The primary export of the Philippines is

people for laboring in other countries. The money that is made there is sent back
home for families to live on. The average family size is 9. Traveling there was

also interesting because Duterte was establishing himself as President of the

Philippines, like Donald Trump he operates on principles of populism. His blatant

disregard for the people of the Philippines was astonishing, however, not

surprising given the circumstances under which we was produced. In the

Philippines, I had the opportunity to talk to several people who had lived through

and been activists in the 1980s under martial law. They said that the current

political climate, both in the Philippines and in the United States was hauntingly

familiar and advised us to become active in our home communities to advocate

for justice.

While I was traveling across Vietnam and the Philippines I started to read

Linda T. Smiths Decolonizing Methodologies. That book was hugely influential

for me, it was a turning point in my understandings. I had spent my junior year

thinking about the effects of colonization and capitalism on indigenous peoples

but had wanted to start thinking about how I could help communities move

forward from that. This helped me figure out that I wanted to focus my senior

project on enacting a method of decolonization.

Coming home from Asia I was still struggling to figure out what I wanted to

focus my senior project on and started to look Seattle to see what kind of work

Native organizations were doing in my community. One space that seemed

sparse had to do with queer native people. So, I looked to see what resources
were available for queer native people outside of the City and found the website

for the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits. As someone who grew up with

native family, who is have native and also queer it surprised me that I had not

hear much about two-spirit identity. I then voraciously read through Queer

Indigenous Theory by Qwo-Li Driskill.

I was inspired by the inclusive work being done by the Bay Area American

Indian Two-Spirit Society and wondered if it could ever be possible to have a

Two-Spirit Powwow at UW. So, I got in touch with the organizers and asked them

about their approach. I also attended the Two-Spirit Powwow in early February

with my partner Charlotte. I had never been in space that felt more natural and

beautiful. I knew that I had to create similar safe and intentional space for young

queer Native people in Seattle and that led me to the work of my senior project.

My studies in feminist queer decolonizing methodologies have allowed me

to dream big in terms of what it could mean to heal from settler colonialism. I

have recently started thinking about harm reduction work and what it may mean

to decolonize that term. How could the methodologies of harm reduction be

expanded upon to serve indigenous communities with more intentionality?

I think I would like to continue thinking about this in terms of possible research

for graduate school. I am interested in the way in which native women (two-spirit

included) are overrepresented in sex work and how calling how that as a result of

settler colonialism could contribute to transformative praxis for Native peoples.

impact on native peoples, specifically native women and children. The report

Violence on the Land, Violence on Our Bodies: Building an Indigenous Response

to Environmental Violence put out by a partnership of Womens Earth Alliance

and Native Youth Sexual Health Network will absolutely be influencing my work in

the future, whatever work that may be. I think that next steps will also simply

include my existence as resistance, I plan to practice my culture and share that

passion on as many scales as possible and with whomever I encounter.

Thanks for reading!

Ruby