Feminist and Queer Environmental Futures: A Call for Planning and Action

Hart Hall 3201
http://campusmap.ucdavis.edu/?b=78

With the escalated attacks on environmental justice, immigrants and refugees, trans and queer people, and BIPOC communities, the urgency to build and nurture movements of resistance and freedom have never been greater. Join us for a transdisciplinary conversation that seeks to think through and unsettle the traditional narratives of environmental catastrophe to imagine radical environmental futures. We discuss and explore the ways feminist and queer of color scholars, organizers, and community practitioners move us in the direction of ecological freedom for all.

Panelists

Rio Biking
Rio Oxas (They/Them)
RAHOK

Río Oxas was born in Yaanga Village—aka Echo Park and their mother is from Kuxkatan and their father from Guatemala. They are Two-Spirit and committed to learning their ancestral teachings of timekeeping and danza. Río is the Co-Visionary and Principal of RAHOK, a family-owned business that illuminates the interdependence of Roots, Ancestors, Health, Outdoors and Knowledge to cultivate loving Eco-Hoods. Their work is focused on Mindful Mobility, Conscious Real Estate and Racial Justice and Equity. Río is also part of a caretaking land collective called Xanich located in Tule Yokut lands.  Visit RAHOK

 

Assistant Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Panelist for Feminist and Queer Environmental Futures.
Oscar Gutierrez (He/They)
Assistant Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, Loyola Marymount University

Oscar’s work focuses on the industrial landscapes of Los Angeles with emphasis on racial and gendered histories of lead poisoning in the US. He is a member of the board of directors at Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and Co-coordinator of the LA History and Metro Studies Group at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Xochitl Flores, Farm Manager at Poder SF. Event Panelist for Feminist and Queer Environmental Futures.
Xochitl Flores (Ze/He/Él)
PODER SF

Xochitl grew up on the Yakama Reservation (Toppenish, WA) and traces their ancestry to the Mixteca Region of Puebla, Mexico. They currently work on cross-pollinating traditional ecological knowledge, queer politics, and indigenous philosophies to connect colonial botany and queer liberation. Xochitl intercrops the decolonization of flowers and queer ecology into the discussion of sustainable agriculture, environmental justice, and a just transition as we reconnect to ancestral plant medicine on occupied lands. Visit PODER SF

 

CJ Jackson
CJ Jackson (They/Them)
Assistant Professor of Department of Native American Studies, UC Davis
CJ Jackson is a Diné writer and scholar from the Navajo Nation. Their work centers around Native and Indigenous literatures and poetic forms of cultural dispossession. Their research works at the nexus of Native and Indigenous Studies, approaches in Gender and Sexuality, Environmental Humanities, Cultural Theory, and Affective Studies.
 
 
Moderator: 
José Manuel Santillana Blanco, Assistant Professor of American Studies at UC Davis. Moderator for the panel, Feminist and Queer Environmental Futures.
José Manuel Santillana Blanco (He/him)
Assistant Professor of Department of American Studies, UC Davis

José Manuel is a scholar, community organizer and storyteller. As a son of Mexican immigrant parents, he was politicized within the rural migrant farmworker landscapes of central California. Drawing on the work of Black, Latinx and Indigenous decolonial thinkers, his work explores the ways Black, Immigrant and Indigenous women-led community struggles across the US United States have been foundational to our understanding of racialized social life, ecological violence and resistance across entangled geographies.