I was born and raised in Western Massachusetts and I now live in Central Oregon.

I’ve been studying land rights and colonization on local and global levels for five years in places such as India, Australia, Scotland, England, and the United States. My interests focus on reconciliation and healing from land-based cycles of violence through learning about land-use systems, ancestry, ourstory, and utilizing dialogue and peacebuilding methods.

I’m currently pursuing a masters degree in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco Psychologies at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

My ancestors lived in Scotland, England, Germany, and Switzerland before immigrating to what we now call (in colonial terms) the United States of America.

I have always held almost all of the privileges this hierarchical society can afford. I’m white, a descendant of settlers, middle-upper class, able bodied, CIS-gendered, and straight. I’ve also received what is considered a good education within our current educational system. The only privilege I don’t hold is being female in a patriarchal society, but nonetheless, my social location is very close to the center of power.

Given this, I learn about oppression, rather than experiencing it firsthand. I will always be a learner in these discussions and I feel it’s most appropriate for me to address and critique my own Euro-American culture as the dominant culture inflicting oppression.

This is the body and lens from which I write. I name these identities because they are influential in the binary-oriented dominant U.S. culture, but I also seek to be a part of a movement to create identities that exist beyond rigidly defined ideas of who we are and who we can be.