Brainstorm Session Resources
By Topic:
Activity 1: Land Acknowledgement
Activity 2: Changing Route Names
Activity 3: Inclusive Guidebooks and Services
Activity 4: Re-envisioning Climbing Culture
Transcription
Brown Girls Climb
Erased: Unpacked
8/27/20
Bethany Lebewitz: Ooh, I like that one. Choose virtual background, ok, let’s see. Man, I don’t know if I was on the same computer. Hopefully it got…oh no! Oh, here we go.
Erynne Gilpin: [Laughs] Oh man.
Melissa Utomo: It’s actually good they have these virtual backgrounds because there’s a hallway here and Derek is just kind of comes in and out. He’ll also be playing Magic in the middle of it.
BL: Oh my gosh! That’s, a movie? That’s so cool.
Ashleigh Thompson: How do you do that? Video settings? Maybe here. It’s virtual background, I see. Oh, can I add my own image? Yes!
BL: Yeah, it should be on your computer thing.
AT: Awesome.
BL: Trying to find it! Oh we’re starting, ok. We’ll give it about 5 minutes for folks to roll in, and then we will start. I’m looking for the best background photo.
AT: Me too.
EG: Ok so we are doing backgrounds, are we?
AT: I’ll do it!
BL: I mean, I am, like, why not. That sounds like fun.
EG: Is that too distracting?
MU: No, not at all. I think it enhances, actually.
BL: I think I’ll download something.
MU: Can I, can I…like an inception of myself? Here we go.
EG: That’s like, put a baby picture.
AT: Aw, that’s so cute!
MU: That’s me and my mom.
EG: That’s so nice.
BL: What other pictures do I have on here…yeah, sweet, I forgot.
MU: Photo inception! There are two of you!
EG: Oh my gosh.
BL: Oh wait, I’m like, missing out on this, I gotta see. Ooh, you know what, trees sound nice. I think I’m gonna do trees.
AT: Yeah, I’ll probably just go with desert.
BL: I was going to go with mountains, but trees feel good to me right now. Oh, and I’m in camo! This is perfect.
MU: I can’t see you, Bethany!
BL: No wonder it feels good. Ok, cool. Oh my gosh. Yeah, for those of you who are showing up there’s a poll up, if ya’ll can just answer. It’s just to help us gauge who’s in the call. We’ll start in a few minutes. So, yeah! Oh my gosh, I love that it’s like, you’re, you’re just popping up [laughs]. Oh, that’s your mom. That’s right, of course. I thought it was you as a teenager or something.
MU: No, she’s always watching.
BL: Ashleigh, where are you at?
AT: Where’s this picture at? So this is in Tucson, and it is in Saguaro National Park east, or west. So it’s not very far from where I live, it’s like a 25-minute drive.
BL: Oh nice. Very pretty.
AT: You can see, like, the saguaro cactus below.
BL: The lighting is super nice.
AT: Yeah, the mountains look like they are on fire.
EG: Woah.
AT: I started beading!
BL: Oh my goodness!
EG: Oh, so beautiful! Those are beautiful. Are they delicas? Little beads?
AT: No, they’re just…I don’t even know what type of beads they are, they’re just beads.
EG: Oh that’s awesome. It’s so pretty!
AT: I just find during some of these Zoom meetings where I just have to listen that it’s actually really nice to do something with my hands.
EG: Totally. I learn better that way, if I’m doodling. I have to be doing something.
BL: Cool cool. Right, I’m going to get comfortable. For everyone that’s watching, and also panelists, just also take care of yourself and get comfortable. Wow, Melissa, this is magical! I like this! Where is this at? Is this a, like a stock? Looks a stock photo, it’s so nice.
MU: It’s a stock photo we used at work. I have no idea where it is.
BL: It’s pretty. Yeah, so if you need water, or tea, or something else stronger, go for it. We’re gonna try to have a good time here so, yeah! And this is being recorded, for the virtual folks who will see this afterwards, it is officially recorded, and deep apologies for missing the last one. That’s why we scheduled this call and it also worked out since there was a lot of questions we just didn’t get to. We hope that it loops you into where we are at in the conversation but also provides some context into what is happening now and some of our thoughts. This isn’t like, a right or wrong or definite thing. We’re all coming from different places in this conversation and so this is our input based on our experience and our identity and how we’re impacted by this, and even within community we’re going to have different views and so trying to seek wisdom about which direction feels like it’s going to be the best for our communities. So yeah, just to put some from the BGC standpoint and hosting this conversation. I don’t know if any of you want to share on the context before we get started. Cool, it’s going to be transcribed as well. That may take a few days but it will be there and hopefully and my plan is to put it all on the website including the Miro workshop notes. Everyone here on this call kind of transcribed them or put them in a more condensed layout. Thanks Melissa for leading that, because looking at the board was really great, but also like, Ah! This is…
MU: …a little overwhelming.
BL: Yeah, when everyone’s brain and creativity is on one place, you’re like, Woah! This is a lot. So yeah, we’ll go ahead and kick it off. Just a few housekeeping things: we do have…I can’t take off the chat box, to my knowledge. Last time we did have some issues with the chat. It was just blowing up, and I just quickly wanted to address that so if ya’ll can keep the chats to a minimum just to kind of focus in on the conversation and what everyone is talking about. I think that’s part of this Erased series is like, we keep talking and not listening to people, and there was a side conversation that happened that was followed up on later and apologized for but it just took up a lot of space and that is the issue and we talked about kind of how we inherit the white male ego and that’s part of it is, like, especially if you identify as white, or an ally, is that, you know, examining how you take up and space and examining whether or not we’re listening. So, I just want to thank again the panelists for taking their time to contribute their thoughts and their energy to this and it’s important that we listen. There will be a time for questions and stuff at the end, but that’s part of the reason why I wanted to change the format and just have a members only because it was really distracting and, for me, really disrespectful of the panelists and their time. So, again, it was followed up on by individuals, but I wanted to write an email but then I was like, But then this is also taking up my time! More time for women of color! Like, I just, we have greater things to do than moderate conversations between white people when our communities are dying and affected. There’s this route-changing topic, but there’s also so much more, and that’s why we do the work that we do within the climbing community. So yeah, and ya’ll are all members, so I think we’re already on the same page in terms of our support and our mission and like, agreeing to what work we do and where we’re headed, as a community, sharing similar values, but also acknowledging we might have different views. I have a poll out, so if you could fill that out if you haven’t already. And then, I just wanted to go over some Zoom things. If you have a question there is a Q&A box so you can do that. We may not get to it right away, but you can certainly use it. It’s at the bottom of the page. That’s pretty much it. I think you can talk to one another privately. You might be able to, though, I think that is limited. But again, try to stay focused, and any questions about logistics for this call, or this webinar, anybody — panelists or attendees. Hi Laura! Ok, if there’s any issues if you’re having trouble hearing us or seeing us or anything, just let us know. Part of the way Brown Girls Climb formats events is trying to get to know one another, but also by acknowledging that the land that we recreate on, that we live on, that we are occupying it, and it’s stolen land, and a lot of people, a lot of indigenous communities have been murdered and raped and affected and displaced. But also that there’s still communities out there living on these lands, and that we are a part of the problem, and hopefully we can be a part of the solution, although that is complicated. And so we just wanted to take a moment of silence. If you want, panelists, what we did last time is turning off our videos if that feels right to you, but we’ll just take a few moments and just take this time to consider, you know, the space that you’re on, what’s the history of that? How many people have been there? Who are these people? Why are they not here currently? And what sort of space you’re taking up and maybe a little bit of how you can improve your interaction with the land and those communities from this point forward.
[Moment of silence]
Alright, thank you. And this is just a practice that we try to do wherever we’re at, and even in our Zoom calls we incorporate this. So if you’re interacting with your climbing community, or professionally, there are ways that you can take a moment to think about our location. And that I think impacted me a lot recently after our last call thinking about our location and relationship with the land. So, trying to be better aware of that, and thank you for that insight. So, yeah! One of the main questions we get a lot is why are we involved in the conversation? Mostly people trying to discredit the fact that we have rights to an opinion on this, but also many people may not know who everyone is, so, we’re just going to kick it off with introductions. So, kind of the BGC approach is names, pronouns, where you’re currently located, and I think everyone on this call is aware of the communities associated with that land, and any background information in terms of your relationship to this conversation, or maybe how long you’ve been climbing–not as a vetted thing, but as, like, why is climbing important to you, and what relationship that you have with it, I think would be a good intro. And if you want to add anything else, like music you’re listening to, or whatever is inspiring you lately, feel free to do that, too. We’ll kick it off to…Melissa because she’s my neighbor, so go for it! Sorry, it looks like I was like, punching you in the face. I’ll do, like, [makes a fist bump]
MU: [Fist bumps back] No, we’re like, fist-bumping. I’m just gonna do that. Hi everybody! My name’s Melissa Utomo, I go with the pronouns she/her/hers. I currently reside in the land of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute, which is also known as Boulder, Colorado. I’ve been climbing for about 6 years now, and the main thing that I do day-to-day is web development and design. So within the context of I guess this conversation, what I try to bring in is the “how,” from a web experience and technical standpoint, and just sharing as much as a I can as far as, like if we’re talking about accessibility or universal design, and how do we provide space in these platforms. Even though it’s not the outdoors, it’s still a connection to how we connect to the outdoors. So I nerd out on things like making technologies accessible and rethinking how we interact with climbing and community through our web experience. So, yeah, that’s me!
AT: [Greeting in Anishinaabemowin] Hello everybody! I’m Ashleigh, I’m a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe. I go by she/her/hers pronouns, and I am of the Eagle Clan. I have been climbing for almost five years, actually more like four and a half years, and about three years ago…well, I think I’ve been roped into these conversations in a few different ways, but like, three years ago I was on the Mountain Project forum and someone brought up this concept of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion and climbing and I jumped on this thread because I was like, Oh, cool! People are talking about this. But then I was met with a lot of lash-back, like, I don’t know, a lot of climbers, a lot that I think were men, and probably white, you know, were like, just didn’t understand why this even needed to happen–conversations around race, and justice. And then a few years ago I also was browsing the Mountain Project website and I came across, like, a few different route names that I just couldn’t believe were in existence. So, there was one called, like, the Trail of Tears and one called Totem Pole. And so, there’s just a lot of ignorance I think from the public just maybe not educated on Indigenous issues or histories and so I’ve kind of done public presentations around equity and diversity and inclusion in outdoor recreation and I’ve brought this to the public’s attention in those presentations and I’ve written on these issues a little bit. So that’s kind of how I got into all this.
EG: Awesome! Hello everyone! [Greeting in Nehiyawewin] So I’m just letting you know a little about my ancestry and where I come from. So my name is Erynne and I’m Saulteaux-Cree Métis, and I love listening to Ashleigh speak in Anishinaabemowin. It makes my heart feel really happy. My pronouns that I go by are she/her/hers and I’m currently just chilling up here in Wawatay and Northern Lights. I wish, actually, but I live on the WSÁNEĆ Territories, really close to actually Tsartlip First Nation where I do have a lot of close friends. So when I think about living here and I think about territorial acknowledgement, I try to think about what that means in terms of how I take care of those relations and how I can be accountable to not only witnessing, but I think protecting their kinship that they enact to these territories that we occupy and live on. So, that’s where I’m situated. In terms of situating myself in the larger context of this talk, I actually haven’t had a lot of exposure with route names and things like because, well, I’ve also been climbing for about five years now, sorry, I think six years, six years now. So I can’t wait for the day I say ten years. But I actually haven’t experienced or encountered a lot of route names other than, you know, one that we can probably share a little bit later on in terms of when we first met at Flash Foxy there was a story there. But, so I didn’t actually know too much about it, but what I did know was the ongoing and very saturated colonial violence that plays out culturally and interculturally at the crag. And so, there’s lots to say, but I really am just super honored to be able to continue to listen and follow Ashleigh and Melissa’s work and engagement with this. Especially, we all exist in different contexts, so it will be really neat to see how we can kind of just enter into this conversation in different ways. I also work as an instructor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Victoria and work as a community birth doula. So those are kind of my other community roles that I play here. So I’m really passionate about also education–not only identifying and interrogating colonialism and colonial violence in our lives, what does that look like? What are those values, and how do they play out in our everyday lives? But also within our own communities really looking at how we experience and express everyday acts of resurgence. So I really think about this as two different pathways–a decolonial approach and a resurgence approach–and it’s kind of a way that I think about this specific topic as well. I’m happy to be here!
BL: Thank you, Erynne! And everyone. Yeah, so my name is Bethany. I usually go by Bethy though, these days, or Bety. My pronouns she/her/ella and I will be the moderator for today, but also participating. So I’m one of the national leaders and the founder of Brown Girls Climb, which is a collective of women of color and women and femmes of color. We have memberships and host events like this one. Our primary goal is to amplify the voices of women and femmes of color in the climbing community with the hopes of shifting how this culture shows up and creating a more inclusive climbing community, a more inclusive and accessible crag. So that’s our primary focus, but we do a lot of other things as well. I grew up in Texas, but am now on Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne land, also called Boulder. I’m not in Boulder, but a little outside of Boulder. Yes…been climbing for about nine or ten years, I don’t really remember when, exactly. Mainly bouldering but now into sport and trad and recently got my SPI, which I’m very proud of. What else? The conversation–within Brown Girls Climb, we’re pretty involved with a lot of the organizations that kind of oversee climbing policy or climbing standards, both on the safety and the cultural end. We’ve been doing that work for a while; there’s others that have doing it much longer. This has personally been in the sphere for a long time. I climb in Hueco Tanks, which was going to be my photo, but I changed it. The names there are pretty horrendous, along with some other areas. A lot of rape culture, but also a lot of racist, homophobia, among other things, that I’ve interacted with. And just on the personal front I’ve failed to kind of bring that up. I think that’s both been a process of my advocating for myself and what I would like to see in the climbing community. I think that’s mainly, but also just orienting myself to this conversation. So within the organization, though, Melissa reached out to us about her idea and really as like, a gift to the community, which was great to see because I think that’s where we find solutions is like, looking at where do I exist at? What skills do I have? How can I share and contribute to the betterment of the places and cultures I’m in, whether that’s professionally or in our hobbies, or in our families. So we were really excited to see her show up like this and it’s an idea that I couldn’t do! That’s not my background! My background is in neuroscience and child development and research, so I do show up in different ways. But it was great to see that with Melissa, so we crafted a letter to get other orgs to support her proposal and that’s kind of where our stance was. How can we advocate for what Melissa is proposing, and also make sure that she is compensated in the process. So that’s kind of our role in this, and we’re kind of still in that role, because part of it is that Mountain Project is an accessible tool. It’s free, and a lot of people access it, so how can we create a safe experience in that? And that may be with the Mountain Project, it may be in something else, but we want to support whatever supports the community. And I’ll just bring to light, too, that there are folks in this that aren’t in this conversation and identities that aren’t represented in this webinar–specifically, the Black community and the adaptive and Disabled community. Amongst others, but those ones are coming to mind right now and do have a lot do with us, so yeah! Any questions right now, and can everyone hear us? I did want to do a quick check-in about that. You can chat. I think it sounds good; if there’s other questions, just let us know.
Yeah, so we thought we’d kick it off, this is the second call–our “unpacked” version–so we’re not going to go over everything we went into in the first one since we want to keep it organic for the folks who are joining us right now and then also to the virtual viewers later. But, I would love for Ashleigh and Erynne if ya’ll want to kind of summarize what happened, or some of our conversation last time, because we kind of did try to orient ourself at a starting point of, Where are we positioned in this conversation? And where is that rooted from? So do ya’ll mind kind of sharing a bit about ya’lls perspectives and how you summarize the last event?
EG: Want to start, Ash?
AT: Sure, I’m looking at sort of the notes that we had from last time to help me remember because I guess it’s been six weeks since we all got together and spoke on these issues. But, last time we did what we just did now–we introduced ourselves and situated ourselves within this conversation. I also wanted to mention that I’m on Tohono O’oodham and Pascua Yaqui territories right now, in Tucson, Arizona. I forgot to say that on this call. But, one thing we did talk about is how these route names, and maybe just this larger culture in climbing impacts us personally. I think a lot of us, I mean, let me know if I’m wrong, but we–and Erynne, I remember she used a really great word, she said these are violent route names–and so I think like for myself as an Indigenous woman I have seen that settler colonial violence perpetuated in these route names with names like Trail of Tears where this is a real event in history in which Indigenous from what is now the southeastern United States were forcibly removed from their homelands–and these were the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chippewa, Creek, and Seminole peoples–and so they were forced on this long march where four to five thousand Native people perished because they were removed from their homelands and taken away under really terrible circumstances. So I think even just talking about it gives me goosebumps because that is such a violent occurrence in Indigenous history, and even though I’m not from those nations my people endured similar treatment under the U.S. government, and so did a lot of other people. I’ve been working in American Indian Studies the last couple of years teaching a 100-level intro to AIS course. So a lot of people are familiar with the Trail of Tears, but I have come to find out that there are people that don’t know about that event. What people don’t know is that similar events occurred all over, I think, Turtle Island, and so the Diné or Navajo people went on a long walk as well as the Yavapai-Apache people, and those are just a few examples here in the state of Arizona. So I think, yeah, we felt emotionally impacted. It’s really hard to be reminded of those histories, because a lot of us hold intergenerational trauma and blood-memory from events like that. So, I can’t speak to the Black experience or other people of color–the diversity of whatever identity they hold–but from an Indigenous perspective, I think that probably summarizes at least that. Do you guys have anything to add to that? Question or response?
Another thing we addressed is, what are some of the efforts we’ve done to address these issues? And how have those efforts been received? So, for me personally, like I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, I was on a Mountain Project forum post and I decided to engage in this conversation of, what is justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion when it comes to the climbing community? So that my first, like, dipping my toes into the water in terms of addressing why that is important and why it’s important that we address racism, and inclusion, and the culture of climbing when it comes to people that haven’t historically haven’t been represented in this community–so women, other people of color, LGBTQ+ people, Disabled people, etc. And then, I’ve been asked by our local climbing association–CASA, the Climbing Association of Southern Arizona–to speak at a few different events and to give an Indigenous perspective on climbing. And I make sure to say it’s an Indigenous perspective–I don’t speak for anyone but myself, I’m just speaking from my personal experiences. I work in academia studying Indigenous research, and being a climber, but not, like, all Native people think alike, so I wanted to make sure to say that. I don’t if, Melissa, you want to explain a little bit about the Mountain Project idea because that was a really big part of the event and I think you could speak better to that.
MU: Yeah for sure. And Bethany also talked about it a little bit, too, and I just forgot to elaborate a little bit on it, but I think it’s a good opportunity to. For me personally it was after an experience, a combination between an experience at a specific crag but then also just following organizations like Brown Girls Climb and Melanin Base Camp online to just see what the community is discussing, and one of the articles that was shared was around sexist route names, but it spoke nothing of racist route names, which is what Melanin Base Camp and Brown Girls Climb was highlighting. So at the time I was a really new web developer, but just looking at Mountain Project and being to pull all of these more overt signs or overt harmful and violent route made it really accessible, unfortunately, and it was apparent there’s a problem. Just the proximity between my technical skills as a developer and designer and especially someone who has been trying really to focus on web accessibility, it was a hard kind of crossover to really ignore. So using the skills that I had at the time just creating this proposal and paying people to test this flagging feature that would enable access for the community to flag route names and then for the organization to do analytics on that and to create proactive things whether that’s a code of conduct or to prevent other route names from being published in the public and being exposed to people in that way. It just basically created this proposal that we presented and that Brown Girls Climb really supported to REI, whenever they owned it. We went through this really odd kind of, just political merry-go-round with REI, and it was the same kind of treatment with Mountain Project, in the exception that the day that I decided to make it public, that they went ahead and made a button that was inspired by the work that I did. So there’s a lot of discussion around that and the appropriation of it and, you know, if you’re going to take something from a community member who at least tried to put in as much information and specialty and experience into making something accessible, but then you’re not getting the permission of it from other people, what are you trying to do, in the end, you know? So, right now, from our previous conversation in the Erased event–and I can go into it later–there were a number of people that were really interested and curious about what would a brand-new climbing guidebook website look like if we could just start from scratch and center Black, Indigenous, Disabled, LGBTQ+ people in the conversation. We started exploring that, and really excited to just get more updates on that.
BL: Thank you for that. I’m gonna pop in real quick and just say, like, to give a little context into this conversation–we named it Erased because of what happened to Melissa but also what continues to happen to BIPOC communities, with special emphasis on the Indigenous community, and that is really where the first talk came from is like, where do we center ourselves and how can we center this conversation that is deeply rooted in land and “ownership” and a colonization type of view and refocus it back to the Indigenous community and see, how do we navigate this as a climbing community that, our culture and this activity has in a way so much ties to white supremacy and colonization that it’s tricky for is as climbers of color, and that is the question that the climbing community and those in power in the community are struggling with right now. We’re on this call to say, Hey! Let’s go back. We want to go forward, but before we make these steps forward we need to all get on the same page in terms of who this conversation belongs to and where this conversation should start. So, I think ya’ll can correct me if I’m wrong or misunderstanding, but that to me was the most valuable aspect of hearing what ya’ll had to say, with also some really specific steps that Melissa was proposing in terms of how to at least start, because we kind of kicked the can around, a lot, or, other folks kicked the can around a lot. I don’t know if Erynne, if you want to talk more to like, kind of centering it on our relationship with land. I think you had a lot of great things to say on the first call, so I’ll hand it to you.
EG: Yeah, totally. As I’m even just reflecting on all of your words again I was looking at some notes I that took on our last call and I have all in a big circle all these different points of representation, and access, this idea of diversity and inclusion, slow mindfulness, intention, racism, intergenerational community storytelling, governments, protocol–all these different points that we really spoke about, I really put in the middle land. You know, of course they’re all suspended in this constellation in relationship with one another–everything is so interconnected. I think a big part of the conversation we had last time, especially it’s so articulated and so embodied in Ashleigh’s reflection write up about “I dream of an Indigenous climbing festival.” To me that’s really something I wish I could read right now because it just carries the essence of what we’re talking about and again and again it’s finding ways to have these conversations about socio- or political or economic or, you know, really unpacking racism within climbing and trying to understand and identify those factors, but again and again it seemed that the conversation came back to two things, and one was our ability to imagine, or our right to dream, and what that looks like. So in some way I think that’s reclaiming and resurging against this idea of us being erased because in the very fact that we have to really fight for spaces to be heard again and again and how exhausting that is and the fact that people in industry and/or in climbing overwhelmingly actually don’t consult proper BIPOC community wisdom and leadership is a demonstration of how our experiences and authority are continuing to be erased. So we talked a lot about what do we dream and how do we use our imaginations so that this work belongs to the next generation and not just for this moment. That was something that really I took away from it, but also we talked a lot about even this idea of naming. Maybe that’s more of an abstract thought–you know, I’m kind of up in the sky over here, that’s usually where I go, my dream state–but we were also reflecting about, what does it mean if we’re enacting relationships where we think we can say, this is called this. We were just kind of challenging that and exploring the tensions in that a bit, in contrast to teachings that many of us have that tell us that land is a relative, and is an agent, and is an autonomous being that requires ongoing layers of consent-based relationship building and treaty and reciprocity, So what does that mean in climbing, especially in contrast to narratives that are about conquering and taking and thrill. Unfortunately those relationships that play out to the land that are really based on extraction play out in our interpersonal relationships with how we access the land. You know, Melissa, that was just really what played out: your knowledge was extracted, it was stolen, it was taken it was not just appropriated, it was a lot more violent than that, I believe. And that’s unfortunately the type of dynamic that we continue to come up against because it’s in attempts in erasing us in kinship to one another and this work in our kinship to the land which is where this work comes from and returns to, I think. So I think, yeah, it really helps me name it, as well, because these are daily things. Whether it’s comments on social media or something you hear at the crag. Literally today I heard, “If Indigenous people wanted to climb and they’ve been around long enough, then they would be doing it by now.” Like, that’s something [laughs] that I heard today. It’s a constant, right? It’s not like, we’re just now deciding to have visibility in this work that we do every single day at our kitchen table and our homes. I’d be happy and interested to hear your reflections about how the work is continuing to be received as we continue to shape-shift through times and now turn to a fall season as well.
BL: Thanks Erynne, and yeah, maybe we can take this time to like, I love that you gave us a tidbit of what we’re hearing because folks, especially members and allies that are like part of our community are like, ‘we’re on board’, and some folks that are new are like, ‘what?’ Are people hearing these names and thinking like, it’s ridiculous that people are still advocating for route names like Gang Bang or you know, there’s a lot worse, but I’ll say that one. They’re still questioning that this is an issue both on that accomplice side of like, why is this even an argument, and then on the other side like, defending these names. Melissa, I know you posted today, so if you’re comfortable sharing about some of the feedback that you’ve gotten. And Ashleigh I don’t know if you’ve gotten any feedback. You know, the purpose of this call is not to focus on those folks, because they already have taken enough of our time, but to update people that this is an issue, and I think this moment in our climbing history is revealing how racist folks are in the climbing community. And it may not be everyone, but they’re loud and they’re in power and very experienced and so have influence over how policies and procedures and how our culture moves. So, I don’t know if you’re comfortable, but…
MU: Yeah, I guess at least on my side, and please, Ashleigh or Erynne definitely chime in, at least from my side it’s been, especially since this work with Mountain Project has gotten so much visibility it’s just been flooding. Like what you were saying Bethany it’s just all of the sudden it’s just people come out and you kind of see their true thoughts around this and racism and the lack of awareness of inflicting violence of any kind, just to protect a route name, for example. So, for me it just made it apparent and also made it apparent that the individuals that the climbing community has normalized as people who should be put up on a pedestal and that are worshipped for putting all of these routes in so-and-so canyon that there are deep, deep human-based, empathy-based things that are lacking there. So when a community goes unchecked about these things like, you know, what is our relationship with the land? What is our relationship with our community? What barriers are we putting up without us noticing? And what kind of violence can we stop from perpetually putting into the cycle? You just end up with these people, or a sport that just promotes these ego-based achievements, and I’m just finding whether it’s very public on some of the forums out there–I have a red flag reddit thread, so just [laughs] it’s just–it’s wild to see the amount of resistance on just letting go of the things that this community have allowed to be normalized and that we just continually center the ego and center dominance. Like you were saying, Erynne, dominance and just, I don’t know, claiming something. It’s just more obvious, and certainly exhausting, but I’m certainly not the only one that has experienced that, and there have been a lot of people that have been very vocal for a really long time and that has gotten ignored and now since this has re-surged up in conversation now it’s gotten a lot of extreme pushback, too.
BL: Ashleigh do you have any comments on this at all? Since our talk, if anything negative or positive have come your way.
AT: So, I had tended to stay away from the online stuff, and every now and then I’ll engage, but I just feel like, especially with people that insist that violent route names are ok, I just like, I can’t convince them online. I don’t know what else I can do, so, I honestly haven’t been engaging that much in this conversation besides…so six weeks ago this event occurred and there’s a lot of pushback, but then we’ve also received, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve received a lot of support. So, I’ve been happy to see people reach out to me, people write their own posts about this, and these conversations are happening. Like Melissa just said, it’s showing the true colors of some people, but then it’s also making other people take a step back and reflect on things that they think might need to change now that we’re starting to have these conversations and these antiracial conversations. I guess that’s my thought on it, and also since we’ve spoken there’s been a few articles written on our event, so I’m sure we can link it, but Grit Magazine did a write-up of our event, Conde-Nast Traveler did as well, and I might even be forgetting some. Actually, a couple people are doing academic research on this topic and they’ve reached out to me to ask questions and gain an Indigenous perspective. So I hope our message is reaching a wider audience. I think it is, because it’s receiving attention. But I’m trying not to focus too bad on the bad energy and trying to focus on the supportive community that has come forward.
BL: Thank you. Yeah for sure, there’s a lot of women and other folks that have contributed to this movement that aren’t necessarily being reached out to, so I’ll just name a few–Jenny, and Genevieve, and those are the folks I’m coming up with! But there’s a lot of other folks that have pushed this into high-viz stuff. This was at least for Melissa and I a kind of lower-key conversation trying to push the back end, and then it helped a lot to get that momentum on social media to push this forward. But yeah, I just want to acknowledge real quick that technical climbing and how it shows up today in our culture was exclusive to alpine clubs. And those alpine clubs–we could do a whole other talk on this–those alpine clubs were intentionally exclusive as in you had to pay in, and you typically were white and male, and I don’t know the exact history on the starting in terms of if there was written rules. I’m pretty sure there was exclusions for women. I don’t know if there was specific exclusions for race, but if some of our population weren’t even classified as human then obviously we weren’t invited to the party and surely didn’t have time and the resources for that activity if we’re trying to fight for our lives. But they’re also in our homelands and our ancestral lands. Most of the mountains in the U.S. here and other places, if you notice in the U.S. if you go to Boulder, it’s a big white population while other mountainous regions in the world are inhabited by Indigenous peoples. We have to consider this context, and so when we think about the culture and how it shows up today and why we’re getting the pushback like this on these names, it’s like, well, it’s white supremacy and toxic masculinity in action! And that’s inherited into all of our climbing, and I see it showing up in me, and it certainly is prevalent among white men and white males–not really white male-presenting, but white men–in the climbing community. Personally, as a climber I don’t know why you’re defending this name. If you set up a route, if you developed a route, then defend the route! Like, the route should speak for itself, it’s good or not good, you know? I can appreciate the style of someone’s climbing. Especially when it’s blatantly racist, blatantly homophobic, there’s no tolerance for that and the conversation is a lot towards, like, what about the nuanced names? But, we can talk about that, and I think that has to be talked about, but there are some very undisputable effed-up names out there that I don’t understand why you would defend it, and I just don’t have time for it. I just wanted to say that, because seeing these guys defend these names I’m like, Ok! If you want to stand by this, like, maybe we should make a list of all these stupid people that are standing by these racist and harmful names. I don’t see that being helpful to the community at all–to youth climbers who are trying to come into this, to new climbers who are trying to come into this. Anyway, I just personally, don’t–well, I can’t say this, but anyway, I mean, yeah. I feel like chopping bolts is a lot worse than like, changing your route name. You know what I mean? If we want split hairs here. But anyway, I’m going off on a tangent. Erynne, do you have anything to say, anything else to say in terms of where you’re at now in the space and what’s going on?
EG: Well it is kind of funny that we actually have to contemplate…for me it’s just continuing to be shocking. Like, Oh wow! It’s really crazy to me that people operate in that way. Or maybe, what is it that you’re really defending? I feel like it’s coming from a place of fear, like it’s a fear of losing control and losing comfort, right? And I think that’s a big response. You know, people are afraid of losing all the control and power that they’ve really accumulated throughout colonial legacies and enterprises. So there’s some real shifts going on, you know? Just last night I was watching my sister and some other really wonderful folks talk about decolonial divine femininity, and they were talking about it in terms of energy in the world and things like that. It was so cool, and we had our journals out, and there’s all these really just unbelievable folks speaking about what that means to them and their own embodiment of energy, and what’s happening in the world right now with all these different things happening in the world. You know, taking the time to check in with the community, with our communities, and say it’s clear there’s some big shifts going on. People are resistant to it, and there’s lots of fear and lots of undermining of what’s really going on, but what is this that’s happening? And how can we tap into it and tune into it so that we can align ourselves in light in this work? And so that we can align ourselves with one another in this work, so that we can align ourselves in the land in this work because there’ total, like, so many different opposing forces and responses to that. It’s like, no no no, don’t! There’s so much fear when it’s very clear, at least from my perspective, what is going on in our world, really. However, I really just wanted to ask you all, and maybe this could be a later question, but I just wanted to hear at this point, in terms of the context of where you may be in your climbing and what you’re able to access, and also how you’re engaging with these sometimes very hurtful conversations, but also like you said Ash, very supported by the community who is receptive to this–which is growing and that’s great–but I did want to ask how are you are all taking care of yourselves? How are you taking care of your wellness? What does that look like to you, because it’s a pretty, like, radical time, you know? And it’s a very charged conversation. I think this is literally…we’re having a conversation that maybe for some people feels very small and like a microcosm, but this is obviously very connected to larger issues that we look at in terms of unpacking and understanding racism and how it plays out in ourselves and how it plays out in our communities. I think, at least in our conversations, we’re able to look at that overarching historical and even spiritual approach to it, but some people may not have that perspective and they’re like, no, this is about just the route that has nothing else to do with anything else. That’s where I think folks really…there’s a lot of perhaps growth to happen in the climbing community as well. We’re not just talking about climbing, we’re not just talking about route names, we’re also talking about colonialism, we’re talking about legacies, we’re talking about our food systems, we’re talking about access to medicines, access to ceremony, and things like that. So there’s obviously so many conversations that are going on, but in all of that, I did want to ask how are you taking care of yourselves right now in this moment in time as well–what wellness feels like and looks like to you all.
MU: I can add to that really quick. I think for me it’s just, like, first going to the community Ashleigh you were talking about all the supporters that have come up and reached out and were really interested. For me, for this instance in my like, little tech bubble, I guess…it’s just giving ourselves the space to innovate and giving ourselves this like…where we’re not charged with this adrenaline to do quick fixes and “hot” fixes, whether it’s route names, whether it’s putting a button on a website to flag them. It’s just hosting this space where a lot of people came in and said, ‘Hey, I’m really interested in envisioning this entire web space and this environment within the climbing community where we just have a brand new app. What does that look like?’ And so for a couple of meetings we just sort of hosted an open forum of like, what does that look like? What does the technicals look like? What would we want to be included? How do we want to incorporate land acknowledgements into it? How do we want to link out to all these resources to educate people on how to respectfully move into the land wherever we’re recreating? And not just that, but how do we tear down these guardrails and gatekeeping when it comes to knowledge around climbing? So how do we remove jargon in the interface? How do we share information around accessibility? Like people put stars on routes all the time, but why don’t we put, like, spoon levels, for example, on routes so that’s like a measurement from 0 to 5 on how accessible it is to different users–wheelchair users, for example. So, to me it’s just like, having the space to…we have the luxury to not inherit the burden and the weight of people who have built these products with the norm of white supremacy and misogyny, and how do we just start all over again and not be rushed by time, not be rushed by money, and just imagine together? And no one is judged for a totally different idea, or like, well what if we never showed route names in interface? What does that even look like? Let’s imagine that. So I think for me the healing part of it is just, moving forward. Moving forward, what does that look like? What is the beautiful, new, technological future look like when we center people who have been historically marginalized.
AT: Ok, I’ll go. So, I agree with everything you two just said. Unfortunately here in Tucson, we had a big wildfire and the mountain is closed where we climb in the summer, and so down in the Tucson Valley it’s 110 Fahrenheit, so you can’t really climb outside, and the gyms are closed because of Covid, so I haven’t climbed since March, early March. So I’ve had to look to other areas to practice my wellness in light of, not just the climbing culture that we’re trying to create for us and future generations, but in light of Covid and Black Lives Matter, the upcoming election here, at least in the United States, and everything that’s going on. I had really great panel discussion yesterday, actually, on Indigenous wellness with three other amazing Native women, and that morning I did a “Yoga with Adrien” YouTube video, so I’ve been tapping into other parts of my wellness that I usually haven’t done very much lately. I’ve been trying to take care of myself by finding other ways to move, either through yoga. Unfortunately I also have a running injury right now and that’s usually another half of my athletic healing and mental health thing I do, so I started roller skating and longboarding and hiking with my camera, beading. A new school year is starting here at the university so I’m on a new teaching team. I think things are changing, seasons are changing. I’m trying to also tap into my spiritual wellness because we don’t have any of our main ceremonial gatherings right now. So either by smudging, or prayer, and practicing ‘here and now’–what is that? Meditation. I just wanted to share a little bit of what I’ve been doing because I think for a lot of us climbing–at least gym climbing–might not be accessible, and if you can climb outside, you’re lucky.
BL: Thank you for sharing that; that sounds amazing. I don’t know if ya’ll are familiar with Daisy Purdy; do you all know Daisy? So she’s an Indigenous women and also does Jedi work, but she roller-skated across New Mexico? I don’t know.
AT: [Nods] Mmhmm.
BL: I think she’s still raising funds for that. It’s called rollerrock.org. But, anyway, she’s got me on this roller skating gig; her and Brittany Leavitt, are like, roller skaters. So I’ve been like, looking at all the threads and all the videos of people dancing; it’s amazing. I guess that’s part of the self-care, to answer your question. I also took a job this summer as a climbing instructor. That was just really great to be able to teach again, and to get back to the reasons why I entered this space to begin with, and to connect with people. Actually trying to plan some projects back in my hometown in Cut and Shoot and Conroe. Trying to kind of take perspective on, yes, I’ve been in this climbing world for a long time and the industry–or a “long-ish” time–but also what good am I in a way if I don’t bring these resources and my knowledge to see how I can support work back home, which is a pretty low-resource area. So I’m getting really excited about that, and it feels really good in my body. So that’s what I’ve been doing; what about you?
EG: Hey! Yeah, I think, Ashleigh, after our last talk six weeks ago you kind of pulled me back in. You know, I would go on social media here and there, just not very intentionally…what am I using this for in this moment type of thing. It would just be the scrolling stuff. Then you said, ‘I’m going to be taking a break’ and I was like, ‘Ok, I’ll totally do that with you.’ Since then I’ve just decided, you know, in terms of engagement, in terms of what we fill our minds with, how I’m better at being accountable to the work and to the things that we’re doing and making sure that what comes in our mind is just as intentional as what we put in our bodies or in our hearts, things like that. I started just going on social media every Wednesday, and I would just go on for a little bit. That would be the day to check things out and see all of the hilarious memes that people see. Other than that, my partner and I start our day, check out the garden, talk to our plants, and then do some work stuff, and then I was just sharing earlier that we live pretty close to a crag, a little climbing spot here, and so we usually go out in the evenings for a climb. Even though we had a bear in our driveway and a cougar up here right in our backyard last week, so I’m a little bit like, Oh! I definitely don’t know how to be around cougars, so the land’s teaching me a lot. I think just being in our garden has just been amazing. It’s been so cool just to silence the mind and also be in more silent places. You really ground down and like, what’s this about, right? Like Ash said, I wasn’t able to go to any summer ceremonies this summer, unfortunately, but I did have our closest friend just come home from Sun Dance. So we’ve just been spending lots of time together and just talking about the role of ceremony in our lives as well in all of this, and those little everyday things we can do to ground ourselves in this work. Yeah, and I’ve also been watching every cooking and baking show on Netflix and trying to bake and cook everything I can, even though it’s really bad! [Laughs] It’s fun, though!
BL: I know, it makes me want to crave everything, and also believe that you are the best chef ever. Like, ok, challenge accepted.
EG: Oh, totally! Oh, everything’s different. Oh yeah, I’ll try all the baking tricks.
BL: Sorry, I’m kind of sweating over here. If it’s ok with you I think we’ll try to wrap it up around 8:30 and spend the next few minutes, next chunk of section, to try to answer some of the questions that we had before. And then for the folks still on, I’d love to open up this time first to ya’ll to see if you had any questions for any or all of us around this conversation or around any of your own personal interactions with this topic. So feel free to pop in. I’m going to turn on a light real quick since it’s getting dark.
MU: Is that basil?
AT: Yeah! [Laughs]
MU: Ah! It looks so healthy!
AT: Yeah, I had it on the porch and it’s just too hot on my south-facing porch right now so I brought it in. I had to move it just to get better light.
BL: Alright, so while the attendees if you have any questions, ya’ll can feel free to put them in the chat box or the Q&A. I’m gonna share my screen real quick to pull up some of the other questions but we’ll prioritize your questions first. So, please let us know!
I don’t see any right now, if any come up in the chat…oh! Here we go, let’s see, where is everyone…sorry, I realize I’m on my screen so…so I’m going to stop sharing so we can see everyone and answer this. “What can we do at a national level to help you all with your activism on this currently?” This is by Kelly.
AT: That’s a great question. I think there’s a lot of things that people can do. What’s coming to mind right now is, I think, bringing what you’ve learned from us or other conversations, or things you’ve read or seen and just, like, sharing what’s going on could be helpful. I don’t know where everyone’s from or if they’re in contact with their local climbing organizations or gyms or whatever, but, I think just like spreading the word and being supportive of changing the racist, misogynistic violence, colonizing, transphobic, homophobic culture in climbing, and either writing–maybe write a post about it if you’re a social media person, maybe talk about it to people in the climbing community where you’re from. I don’t know, what do you guys think? Especially, I was wondering, Melissa, in terms of, like, your work with this technology and the tool, how can we support you? Because that’s an arena I’m not very familiar with and I don’t know how we can help besides spreading the word about what’s been going on.
MU: Yeah, I think, at least for the things that are happening in the immediate community that I’m involved in, we’ve gone through a couple sessions where I could call more exploratory, just to gauge at the temperature of everyone’s interest, especially in the tech and climbing community, which is small, but we’re all there and we’re very passionate about this topic. I think right now it’s just coming down to money. Currently, I’ve been able to fund everyone’s time and I think that’s the best way to do it, but when we start to get into more focused conversations and when we start to build intellectual property together–we’ll need a little bit of time to gauge exactly how much we need–but just finding these types of projects would be really helpful. I’m sorry I don’t have a lot of details right now, but that is coming up and something that a number of us are staying committed to and want to make a difference in. Again, these are people who have really specialized skills, like in development and design and project management and in community program design as well. So, I think in the near future we’ll be figuring out funds and what that looks like so that way we can actually get this thing built. Stay connected with communities as well–stay connected with Brown Girls Climb and Indigenous Women Climb just to make sure that this solution is still grounded with the community. We’re watching everyone’s social posts and seeing what is being amplified, what are the concerns even with, like, jargon, for example. I know @tallguybeta–I know him by his handle–has been sharing a lot of wonderful content that is gonna help guide this climbing app. So, yeah, nothing solid right now, but will be coming up soon. And then, I think to piggy-back a little bit with what you were saying Ashleigh, with just keeping the community engaged and talking about it and sharing this information is that, after a recent event I’ve also had mountain bikers and hikers come up to me and talk about some of the similar naming issue. A lot of the things that everyone in this panel have mentioned as things that you shouldn’t use as route has also appeared in other recreational communities. So even if you’re not a climber this is still so applicable to other sports. So just seeing how all the dots connect and that we’re all under the weight of the same oppression.
BL: I can pop in just on a logistical kind of right in terms of this specific conversation and the first event–we will be sharing these resources, or kind of what the brainstorming session was. There was some really great suggestions through that, and then also Ashleigh shared–I think all of us shared some degree of resources, or folks in the chat shared resources, so we’ll put that on the website. Just give us a little time to get those together. I think most of it’s done, but the resource–we’ll try to condense a page. Just some language clarification: LCO, a local climbing org, is kind of a broad term, but there are formalized LCOs that are associated with the Access Fund. They focused on stewardship and looking at land related to climbing. They’re in most climbing areas, or most climbing regions where there’s outdoor climbing, so you can find your closest LCO on the Access Fund webpage. There might be ones that aren’t associated with the Access Fund so that might just on climbing threads and stuff. I think at least from what I know of the Access Fund there’s some push to look at the culture and look at Indigenous wisdom and perspective on this. Again, they’ve got their faults, but some of the LCOs associated with Access Fund are getting some of that information and so should be receptive or a little more educated on these topics than maybe a non-affiliated group would be. Erynne, did you have any…?
EG: Well, there’s probably not much I can really add. We do…we have so many different overlaps in terms of being in the States and being in Canada, but I think in terms of nationally at least with the context that I’m here up north is just, really constantly and consistently trying to reflect our values that are in our most intimate circles and then let those circles expand out from there. I try to think about sometimes it can feel overwhelming to know where and how to enact our governance or solidarity or activism when we think about national or international levels, but it really comes down to the types of values that we tolerate in our interpersonal relationships and the types of standards we hold one another to as well. Maybe these leads into the second question that came up, but I think in terms of supporting this type of work it’s really…I will say again and again and this is what I’ve had to do when I didn’t understand what it meant to have light-skinned privilege. That was a huge learning curve in my life, and it’s something that I really didn’t know what that meant and how that perpetuated violence in my relationships, whether that be anti-Blackness, or racism that I was reproducing in my life unknowingly, but just by not checking my embodied privilege, by not checking certain parts of myself. So, you know, when I was guided to do that work and the way that that happened with family and things like that, it was really an opportunity for me to kind of come back to myself and critically reflect about my positions in relation to the world around me. That was at a time when I was really angry and really screaming on every front line that I could consistently for five years and then having panic attacks at the same time. And so it was kind of this teaching that was telling me to return inward and think about, what’s critical self-location? What’s critical reflection? Where do I locate in this and how does my identity therefore influence my responsibilities and my action-based responsibilities, so accountabilities to one another? So, instead of I think even asking how can we help this group or that group, I think it’s really starting with what work can I do internally? How can I take agency to do that work, if it’s reading or documentaries or starting a community of practice in your professional space. These are the conversations that ideally should be happening at every level. And one day, you know, when they’re starting to be under the guise of diversity and inclusion they’re being welcomed to be had, but still. I just came out of a diversity and inclusion role within an institution and I had to fight for every single thing. It wasn’t set up to actually do the work that they had said they wanted to do. There’s no–I’m thinking of the Portuguese word–there’s no waste of energy. We can do this type of work inside-out in any space that we are in, whether it’s a climbing community, but probably more importantly first in our homes. So what does that look like for you, for us? Yeah, that’s just the thought that I had.
BL: Yeah, I love that. I mean, that is this work, because if we can’t work on ourselves then it’s really hard to advocate for other communities or change if you haven’t been through the process yourself, which is ongoing, too. I think all of us here in this conversation have done the same process in different ways to recognizing our privilege and continuing to recognize how that shows up and how we are both oppressed and act as an oppressor towards other people in various contexts. Thank you for elaborating on that part, too.
EG: Yeah, well and, I was talking to a Cree educator and she’s a good friend of ours. Her name is Shauneen Pete–I recommend anyone to look up her work. She’s from Little Pine Cree First Nation and she says, Indigenous people–we’re comfortable with being uncomfortable. We’re constantly either in situations that are not made for us and/or we exist in many different convergences of identity, or belonging, or responsibilities. We’re comfortable being uncomfortable. So conversations that are uncomfortable, that require humility, that require vulnerability, that require checking in–that’s ok! The discomfort is ok. We’ve all experienced that in climbing, that’s for sure! Even though I’m a crying baby every time that happens in climbing, you know? But it’s ok to not have the answers and it’s ok to be in the discomfort. And it could take years before you can find, well, what does this mean for me and my place in this work.
BL: Thank you. A lot of these questions actually, we have two more, at least from the folks here on this call, and they’re also some of the ones that we needed to follow up on. So that’s great that there’s some overlap there. The next question is, “How can we center Indigenous sovereignty at our next day at the crag, or on our next climbing trip? What things would you suggest?” We’ll probably share some suggestions out that Ashleigh, I think you wrote on our document, but if any of ya’ll have some suggestions that would be great.
AT: So, I feel like there is, I don’t know the word. There’s things we can do that directly supports Indigenous sovereignty and then there’s things we can do that indirectly supports Indigenous sovereignty. So, directly supporting Native sovereignty, at least from my perspective, and I’ve studied American Indian study and the context of the United States, and so I think I might want to explain this concept, how we visualize it here just quickly because I don’t think that everybody knows what is sovereignty and what that means for tribal nations. In the United States at least, when outside powers came here to settle lands they entered into treaties with the different Native nations they encountered here. On the treaty-making process is a recognition of the sovereignty, or the ability of another nation to self-govern and be authority over their own people and their lands. So by entering into treaties with Native nations that was a recognition that the Indigenous peoples here were sovereign. There’s been a lot of Supreme Court decisions since the treaty-making era, but when it comes down to it, tribal nations here in the United States are recognized as sovereign, dependent nation, which is kind of a tricky concept to visualize, but in terms of at least politically and legally we’re within the context and we’re under their authority, but we have this nation to nation relationship in which the United States is supposed to look after the best interests of tribes. However, they have sorely failed in a lot of ways doing that. I think Erynne can speak to some, I don’t know, she’s up north so I think it’s a little different, and there are other types of sovereignty as well and like, self-determination. I’ll just give one quick example: there is a mountain here in southern Arizona on Tohono O’odham land. A lot of climbers like to do it, it’s like a backcountry route. There’s a lot of routes, actually, to get to the top of this mountain. It’s called Waw Kiwulik, or Baboquivari. So if you access it from one side, you’re on the reservation. If you access it from the other side, you’re on “public lands.” So the Tohono O’odham nation they really ask that visitors, if they access it from the reservation side, that they sign a waiver and that they are respectful visitors, meaning that they practice good stewardship. There’s actually a little shrine at the top of the mountain where you can leave offerings, because it’s a really culturally and religiously significant place to that nation. So that I would say if you’re climbing, try to do your due diligence and research any climbing restrictions, waivers you might need to sign. Look into the history of a place. Devil’s Tower here, also known as Bear Lodge, in Wyoming, they ask that you don’t climb during the month of June because that’s Sun Dance time and a lot of Indigenous people are there and they don’t want climbers around because they have found that it’s been disruptive to their ceremonies. At least directly, you know, research who’s land your on, what kind of restrictions there might be that are actual legal restrictions or even just things that they ask, because it’s a voluntary ban at Devil’s Tower during the month of June. So I guess legally you can climb there, but think about the implications of not only your actions on the ceremony, but also what does that say to the Indigenous community if you’re gonna ignore this voluntary ban and blatantly disrespect their ceremonies. There’s a lot of indirect things you can do to support Indigenous sovereignty. Support Indigenous activism–we’re all trying to protect a lot of the same landscapes, maybe for different reasons, but I think we all want to conserve and protect the land for generations to come. Support Indigenous people financially. Get the word out. Learn about maybe where your public, education or private education was lacking and that sort of thing. Do you have anything, I’m sure you do, Erynne, to add?
EG: No, not much at all. I could listen to you forever. I should come to one of your…are you online teaching in the fall?
AT: Yeah, but I’m teaching World Archaeology which…
EG: Ooh, I should just join in and just learn.
AT: [Laughs] I’ll enjoy it.
EG: One way that I was thinking about this question was kind of a remapping of how we picture the landscapes around us and how we picture just naming in general. My partner’s from, quote unquote “Brazil” and when he came up I drew him a decolonial tour of where we were living based on teachings and knowledge shared with me by community here. There’s a really well-known mountain here called PKOLS, but in English people call it Mount Doug, which is just the worst name ever. So I feel that his introduction to being here was based on the proper place names of where we are, where we’re located, where we live, and we really just kind of challenged ourselves to stop calling places by their city names, or their state names or province names. We instead just put those aside and it’s really amazing what happens with the idea of borders and territoriality as well. We just started to acknowledge where we were based on the local nations’ names of those places, and that we can do anywhere when we travel. It takes work, it takes relationship-building, it takes time, but I think it’s a really neat way of thinking about how we can remap space inside of our own minds as well and through a lens that isn’t colonial. Our imagination is, as you were saying Melissa, so powerful, so how can we even remap how we think about cityscapes as well. What are the new nations that are being born out of cityscapes. We have, like East Side Nation coming out of Vancouver, and that’s a mix of lots of different Indigenous folks live in downtown east side of Vancouver, but they identify themselves as a part of–they’re very intertribal, but they’re East Side Nation. There are new nations being born as well and new kinships being born across our communities so I think also that’s just a helpful practice, again in our internal self, thinking about where we access climbing and how we access climbing, and even how we imagine those spaces as well.
BL: Thank you. Just from a non-Indigenous perspective, it is a journey, and it goes back to what Erynne was saying, I think just starting with yourself. There’s a lot of options to show up and to do this work. Yeah, it’s a journey from my end and it’s a constant process of reevaluation and making sure I have people around me to check in and to learn from and also to make sure that those relationships feel equitable and caring. So, that’s what I’ll say on my end. We’ll do maybe two more questions–we’ll do the last question from attendees and then I have a question for you all. So, it’s a good one considering the Mountain Project’s reluctance to take action, “Is pushing to change route names there, in Mountain Project, a worthwhile venture, especially considering that there’s no official arbiter of route names. Have you all decided to direct your energy elsewhere instead.” Thank you, Zach, for this question.
MU: Yeah, of course I can only speak for myself based on the experience that I have with Mountain Project. I have been able to see them in the light of whenever they were owned by REI and then also when it back to one of their original cofounders. To me it was just really exhausting and really difficult to get them to take action, and also to be really transparent, to be really helpful in the process, because these are things that not just me but other community members have asked for for a really long time. To me it’s no longer something that I’m directing my energy to. If anything, I think the things that have happened and that have gotten a lot of visibility has served its role, which is to allow people to have something tangible to look at and to open up this broader, much larger, important internal conversation about land and what does it mean to name things and physically to be a community. I think for now I’m trying to create some closure in that phase because we did everything that we could. We were silent and we were loud. We weren’t in the background with people, we played the political game, and then we were very visible, we were very loud and got a lot of attention and none of it worked, even when we got a response from the cofounder about all of this. It wasn’t really an apology, it wasn’t really anything that recognized all of this, that was reflective in any way of the situation or had any accountability. For me this just shows that there’s a point where you put so much energy because you know these people are in power and you know the tool is so accessible and it’s free and everyone uses it, but there’s a point where it just has so much baggage that it would have to be a huge systemic overhaul for it to change. And I’m not just talking about the people who develop on it, but the people who contribute to the forums, people who have normalized a lot of just really toxic community. For me personally I’ve decided to move my energy elsewhere.
AT: So, when I first started climbing four and a half years ago I really appreciated the resource, particularly the route names, how to find the crag, tips we should know, closures, that sort of thing. And then I’ve used the partner meet-up: I have a couple climbing friends that I meet through Mountain Project. And looking back on that I’m like, wow, I really did run into the right people, considering all of the problematic people I’ve encountered on that website. I think that fundamentally there’s some really useful things with the website, but how it is right now and how it’s being run and what they did to Melissa and her work has just, like, so infuriating. There’s people that have been flagging names and calling Mountain Project out and I came across a response by one of the admins that was just so rude and disrespectful to someone—to a woman—that was calling out a route name or something. He accused her of being hyper-sensitive and that she was the problem with society…I don’t know, it was super rude. If that’s the people who are working for the company—I don’t know exactly what they are, technically—I don’t really…one thing Erynne brought last time that I’ve been trying to enact is like, what would my traditional teachings tell me to do? At least what I’ve been taught is that if you’re having an issue with someone, to ignore them. I’ve come to terms with what Melissa said—unless things really systemically change within Mountain Project I don’t think I want to personally work with them or collaborate with them just to see how other women have been treated by them. It’s not a safe environment for me and other women.
EG: I have nothing to add, Bety.
BL: I’ll just answer from a BGC front—we entered this conversation to support Melissa’s work and we’re going to continue to do that. It’s kind of tricky for us—we make decisions as a leadership so we haven’t met on this topic again so I’m just going to say that out there—generally from our perspective on how we operate within these spaces is that, you know, most of the organizations and companies that are out there are awful, because they’re rooted in this colonial, white-supremacist aspect. We’ve tried to position ourselves to act as a mediator—it’s careful we have to navigate gate-keeping—but part of it is can we do this collectively so that we can reduce the harm that those direct relationships cause. If we bring our collective voice together to hold companies accountable or navigate these…I mean most of what we want to do is move resources, so trying to hear what the community needs and hear what resources companies or orgs have and to try to like, here’s the feedback, here’s the means, how can we move this? In my opinion there’s little hope for true change in these companies because they’re super old or these orgs because they’re old and they’re older and in this sense when you’re founded by one person, and even within Brown Girls Climb, we have these values that we come in with and it’s hard to change them. It’s especially hard if you don’t build into the beginning, like, we are going to actively change and actively evaluate ourselves. From the beginning that’s a core value. Mountain Project is founded by one guy who had some time on his hands and solved a problem and created a really good resource, but it’s problematic. Unfortunately, like the rest of things, like clothing, our climbing gear, there’s not enough Black and Brown businesses or companies or non-profits and whatever doing these things. It’s not because we don’t want to, it’s because of historical disenfranchisement. We try to work on both ends of encouraging Black and Brown entrepreneurship and ideas like Melissa’s talking about, but also realizing that our community is going to access these other resources in the time being and how can we reduce harm while they’re accessing it. That is generally the stance that we take within Brown Girls Climb: there are two situations here and how can we both support here and hold accountable here and move resources. It’s tricky and we don’t always know what we’re doing, but working with the best intentions. Without any formal stance that’s generally the perspective that we work out of and that may be still the case with Mountain Project knowing that this is on everyone’s phone and they are accessing it regardless, so can we reduce the harm of those interactions while also trying to get funds to make this awesome new app and website. I don’t know if anyone else has anything to add. If not, I will close with a final question.
Cool. First of all, I want to thank each of you and everyone that’s still hanging on to the call and everyone that’s accessing this online. Once again this will be transcribed. I hope that we can take this knowledge and take it back home to other climbers, hopefully integrate it into other parts of our lives, how we occupy land and put in to action in some way or form. We’ll share again the workshop notes that we had from the first call along with some resources and this video. Final question is, and this could be a difficult one, so choose what you want, “Where is the place that you feel most centered or at home at, and why?”
EG: Well, mine is my homelands. Something happens when I return home. I didn’t grow up in my community, so in a lot of ways connection to my culture, to my language, the container of all that defines how I understand my identity was something that I learned over life, and a lot ways feeling outside-in, and visiting, through visiting, through being there for certain seasons, like moose camp or summer season or trapper’s festival, so going there for extended visits. But…there’s something pretty powerful that happens when I know that I’m swimming in the waters and walking on the grounds and helping clean a deer that is related to the same deer that fed my ancestors—sorry, I wanted to say moose—that is related to the same ancestry of moose that fed my family and had relationships and treaties with my family members thousands of years ago. It’s very powerful, and I don’t really feel overwhelming, like, ‘Oh woah;’ it just does something to me where it just grounds me, like it puts my belly button to the land and just pulls me back in and pulls me back home. I need to be there at least once a year to recharge and just kind of reground and re-center. So that’s what my answer is.
AT: I was going to say the same thing. I guess Erynne and I are similar—most of my life I grew up away from Anishinaabewaki or Anishinaabe land. Since coming to myself and being on a healing which really has centered my culture and my family and my community, that has been a really big part of my life since young adulthood. So essentially, like, I grew up away from my homelands, and then I went back there for college—Minnesota—I went back to Minnesota for college and I got in touch again with my community and my native family and the language. Every summer, except for this summer because of Covid, I usually return. Luckily I got to go this January, but I go…my tribal nation is Red Lake Ojibwe Nation, and we’re in northern Minnesota, and so when I am there and I’m around my people that look like me, they accept me, I see in here the language, like I’ll see signs in Ojibwemowin and that is really comforting to me. I did a school visit in January 2020, before Covid hit. I was in the middle school on a reservation and a kid walked around to each classroom with a smudge and I was like, this is amazing and I feel completely at home and like, we were just smudging in the middle of class and that was just normalized. I also got to hear, like, they have a cultural teacher and so they kind of have periods the kids go and we played hand games, and then another period she told traditional stories. It was just, it’s so…that’s where I feel most like myself and where I feel most accepted, too.
MU: I have to say for me it is my motherland in Indonesia. At first I kind of hesitated at answering with that, and I think a lot of that is because I grew up there until I was seven and we immigrated to the States with my family and we went through a really intense assimilation process. And so there was this knee-jerk reaction that I had that was like, well, you don’t even speak Bahasa, you’re not fluent, you know, you have barely any remnants of culture because our family was so focused on survival. We grew up in Louisiana, and we were initially Muslim, but then we transitioned to Catholicism after 9/11, so…it was just a really intense process, and I think I’m learning to be more comfortable with the fact that I am Indonesian and that is who I am, and just because I’ve been so disconnected and our family has–in order for us to survive–has adopted a lot of white, traditional American things, that it doesn’t mean that, I don’t know, that I don’t deserve that, I guess, if that makes any sense. For me it’s like, yeah, being there, seeing people that look like me, smelling and tasting food that brings me back to when we grew up to when we were speaking Indonesian and it was just normal and, I don’t know, it was just…yeah. There’s a difference there, even though it’s been a really long time. So, for me it’s that.
BL: Thank you. You guys all answered a lot broader than I thought you were going to answer. I thought you were going to answer like, a room or a space or a specific area, so I loved hearing kind of the sounds and the people involved in your home. I’ll kind of wrap it up with mine. I would love to say where I grew up, the truth is there’s a lot of bloodshed there and a lot of historical racism and lynchings, and it doesn’t…besides my little family unit and my home of my parents, the physical space there, it doesn’t feel–it doesn’t like home in a lot of ways. But Texas in general does, and Hueco Tanks National, or State Park, which is land of Tigua tribes and a few other ones feels the most home. It’s in El Paso and similar to Ashleigh, there’s an essence there just makes me feel welcome and re-rooted with my ancestors, and that’s an ongoing journey. I’m third generation, so we were in Mexico in Guanajuato—which I don’t know anything about my family there—and then moved to Texas, moved to Chicago, and moved back to Texas, and so I think in that area, in that border region, there’s such great representation and such a great mixture of Indigenous folks, first generation Mexican Americans—chicana, or chicanx folks—and so you go to the park there and like, the land feels like home and it has a lot of petroglyphs and a lot of history there that is upfront and part of the experience of the park. That was kind of the first time—you learn about, or we learned about the history a little bit in Texas history—but going to the park and actually interacting with, they make you watch a video about the history there and about how the tribes have, like, what there ceremony is and what some of the art and the communication around the park is, and it felt great, it felt like home. Of course some climbers are in it for me because they complain about it, but now when I go back I hear a lot more Spanish on the crag and I just feel like I can eat tacos around the corner and I can go climbing and it just feels so welcoming and I hope we can bring this experience and share this experience with others through changes like the ones we’re talking about, so where folks can go into this spaces and regardless of where they’re coming from that they can enter it with appreciation and a sense of being connected, like Erynne, Ashleigh, and Melissa have talked about. Being connected with the land out of our connection with each other and we are part of this earth and how can we go into these spaces and honor the folks that have been here but also the folks that we’re interacting with today and the land that we are appreciating as we climb. Last thoughts or comments from the panelists before we wrap it?
Awesome. Cool, well, again we’ll post this eventually, hopefully very soon, not four weeks. I appreciate everyone’s patience on the second edition, and we will share out and we wish you well, and thank you so much for tuning in, and thank you to all the panelists for sharing your time. To support them you can still Venmo Brown Girls Climb or them directly and we’ll make sure to get those resources to them. Sorry, I interrupted Ashleigh.
AT: I just said miigwech, thanks! And see you guys hopefully in person soon.
EG: Miss you all!
BL: Bye-bye.
Transcription by Liz Fillion