Why Evelynn Escobar Is Returning to & Reclaiming the Outdoors (& Why She Wants More Latinas To Do the Same)
Usage Guide
Overview
As Latinas, we come from a long lineage of people, especially matriarchs, who lived as one with the land. But it’s a connection that colonialism disrupted in our homelands and that racism and xenophobia in the United States have continued to keep us from.
The disconnection runs so deep that even now, places where our ancestors once lived, cultivated, gathered, prayed, and healed, can feel like areas we don’t belong to when, in fact, they are where we remember and where we become. And there’s something about being separated from that — from a place of healing, from a place of blooming — that feels cruel and intentional. It feels like something we should shamelessly reclaim.
In this episode of Sin Vergüenza by Somos, host and deputy director of Somos Raquel Reichard speaks with Evelynn Escobar, the founder and executive director of Hike Clerb, an intersectional, decolonial nonprofit, outdoor collective, and hiking club. Since 2017 the Guatemalan-Black American Escobar has created community spaces for queer, trans, and women of color to return, reclaim, and heal in nature.
Details
Throughout the conversation, we explore the barriers that have historically made parks, trails, and other natural spaces feel inaccessible or unwelcoming to racially or ethnically marginalized people, the healing and community that can come from taking up space together, and the ancestral relationship Latinas have to the land. We also talk about what it means to move beyond the idea of “getting into nature” as a lifestyle trend and instead see it as a return, a remembering, and a way of reconnecting with ourselves and one another, even if you don’t consider yourself a hiker.
Stream the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or watch it above.
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Source
Originally published at www.refinery29.com.