I was raised on the traditional, unceded, and stolen lands of the Choctaw people past, present and future. The land already had a name, Bulbancha, meaning “the place of many tongues” (colonized as New Orleans, LA) and was a space of exchange for many Indigenous people, including Atakapa, Caddo, Choctaw, Houma, Natchez, and Tunica nations.

I am a descendent of slaveholders as well as Mandé peoples. The wealth of my family, New Orleans, the South, and the United States as a whole was created on the backs of millions stolen from their home and forced to work without choice, pay, or freedom.

I live and work on the traditional homelands of the Marys River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya. Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855, Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians.

I am working to surrender participation in “spheres of coercive hierarchical domination” (H/T Bell Hooks) and “co-create a world where the politics of domination are no longer normal or possible.” (H/T Kelly Diels)