Writings and projects

This collection aims to fill in the deep gaps of vital contributions that have been erased from the sexuality field, illuminating the historical and current work, strategies, solutions, and thoughts from sexologists that have been excluded until now.　

Historically, the US sexuality field has not included the experiences and wisdom of racialized sexologists, educators, therapists, or professionals. Instead, sexuality professionals have been trained using a color-free narrative that does an injustice by excluding their work as well as failing to offer a fuller examination of how they have expanded the field and held it accountable. The result of this wholesale erasure is that today many sexuality professionals understand these contributions as extra or tangential, and not part of the full vision and history of the field of sexology. Highlighting the voices and experiences of those who have been racialized and thus excluded, isolated, erased, and yet have still emerged as vital contributors to the North American sexuality field, this text offers a significant shift in the way we learn and understand sexuality, one that is expansive and committed to liberation, healing, equity, and justice. Divided into three sections addressing safety, movement, and oral narratives, the contributors offer insightful and provoking chapters that discuss reproductive justice, LGBTQ themes, racial and social justice, and gender, and disability justice, demonstrating how these sexologists have been leaders, past and present, in change and progression.

This futuristic textbook includes correction, engaged reading, and lesson plans which offers community workers and trainers an opportunity to use the text in their non-traditional learning environments. Creating a path forward that many believed was impossible, this accessible book is for all who work in and around sexuality. It welcomes inquiry and celebrates our humanity for the worlds we are building now and for the future.

U.S. Federal Land Management Areas (FLMAs) are grounded in settler colonialism, including Indigenous land dispossessions and violations of Tribal treaties.

This critical thought-piece is written by Indigenous scholars to reimagine FLMAs (especially recreation areas) through decolonization and the Indigenous value systems embedded within the “four Rs”: relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution. We reweave conceptions about parks and protected areas, reimagine park management, and reconfigure management foci to reflect Indigenous value systems shared by Indigenous peoples. We emphasize a need for Tribal comanagement of FLMAs, the inclusion of Tribal land management practices across ecosystems, and the restoration of Indigenous land use and management rights. Land and recreation managers can use this paper to 1) decolonize park management practices, 2) understand how Indigenous value systems can inform park management foci, and 3) build a decolonized and reciprocal relationship with Tribes and their ancestral landscapes.

In my MAIS capstone project, I presented reflexive storytelling as an act of resistance that wove together my experiences in white settler spaces as a student and educator, titled, The Table of Power: A Liberatory Praxis Through Indigenous Knowledges. The story becomes a metaphorical Indigenous Framework for liberatory praxis, "particularly in this moment of a metastasizing settler state…" in which "it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to refuse, reimagine, and rearticulate assimilative logics in all of their (low and high intensity) forms" (Grande, 2015. p. 7). My story work creates a more nuanced understanding of how the systems and mechanics of colonization (e.g., supremacy and capitalism) affect colonized peoples on a personal level while also drawing attention to the systemic oppression created by these systems. I begin with a story of the table of power and then replace hegemonic colonial systems of knowledge with the Nahui Ollin (an Indigenous Way of Knowing and Being) and theories of black feminism to tell a counter-narrative story that is an act of defiant Indigenizing (Indigenous theorizing). Like Laura Harjo (2019), I dream in Indigenous futurities, as my ancestors have always done to create an Indigenous replacement for the table of power–a space created in collaboration by the colonized through the four energies (Tezcatlipocas) of the Nahui Ollin. {Click below to download full paper}

Yoga describes a living, breathing practice rooted in a system of liberation that contains two, main, lateral rhizomes: power and spiritual connection. The rhizomes of power and spirituality intersect with harmful, complex systems of imperial and European-settler colonization that originated in India and then transplanted to the United States. Through a decolonial and feminist lens, the rhizomes can be traced back to examine how these systems have morphed from a spiritual and philosophical practice to a health focus, a science-based practice, and a lifestyle. {Click below to download full paper}

The journey to create a yoga teacher training program rooted in liberation and social justice led me to many self-inquiries ranging from a) Imposter Syndrom as a non-Indian; b) questioning how a program could be responsibly created amidst a practice that inherently contains systems of white supremacy, capitalism, misogyny, and ableism; and c) hoping that a yoga teacher training program could be reimagined as a practice rooted in liberation and social justice through a decolonized, queer, and feminist lens. 

The Manhattan Project was a research and development initiative that resulted in the first nuclear (atomic) weapon that began in 1939 (Pasternak, 2010).Uranium is the critical mineral that was used to create one of the most devastating weapons of our time. The United States government mined uranium, predominantly, on Native American (indigenous) land in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah (Hall, 2016) from 1944 to 1986 (Nez, & Lizer, 2019). The mining industry created job “opportunities” for indigenous people with a bonus “patriotism” badge of honor for performing duty to Country. {Click below to download full paper}