I am a queer, non binary, mixed race person of color. When I am on my bike, away from the city, I feel free. I feel liberated. I feel far from the guy who grabbed my hand on the bus, the cat callers, the white women who assume I’m not qualified for my job, the cis folks who aggressively gender me, and white people who ask me where I’m “really” from. I feel like the trees and the rocks and the water don’t care where I’m from. I’m from the trees and the rocks and the water. Outside is a place where I’m just allowed to be.
FTW are proficient at creating spaces for ourselves. Online spaces, the space between two friends over tea, events and art that celebrate our voices. We are adept at creating these spaces because in a cis hetero patriarchal world that does not see us as normal, powerful, or natural, making space is a survival mechanism. We make our own spaces or we die, alone, in fractured corners of isolated shame and dysphoria. We are always at the vanguard of language and social and racial justice, because we are affected the most by violent gendered and racialized language. We reclaim and make spaces and languages to describe our reality, and eventually (hopefully) the rest of the world catches on.
I sit by this creek, with my toes in the burbling water, tree leaves dappling the large round rock I am sitting on. I am healing myself by giving myself this time outside. My bike is quiet, waiting patiently. Traffic and responsibilities are distant. My phone is off and I’m scribbling on a pad of hot pink paper. I’m breathing and thinking about how making space for ourselves outside conflicts and intersects with our existence on stolen and occupied land.
When I think about making space for myself, as a POC FTW who is not indigenous to the occupied Dakota and Anishinaabe territory of Minneapolis where I live, I sometimes think about the “outside is free” campaign, and themes of “liberation” and “exploring” the outdoors. I think these messages resonate because nature is a place that holds me and all of my identities without judgement, but they also dangerously promote a false narrative that nature is empty, untouched, and there for discovery or to be conquered. This narrative assures us that it is our right to be outside, our right to name things, our right to claim all we see. Assures us that it is our right to colonize/Columbus what has been stolen and is occupied.
I think the outdoor industry is so guilty of creating this narrative, while creating more barriers for POC and Original People to connect with nature in sacred and recreational ways. The industry does not represent us beyond tokenizing us as marketing material, the industry has created an expectation that expensive gear is a necessity, the industry has promoted climbing and otherwise desecrating sacred places.
I claim space from the outdoor industry when I bike down trails, dip myself in water, and listen to trees in the wind. I resist the siren song of “outdoor liberation without responsibility” by swapping and buying gear second hand, picking up trash, naming the land I am on, and learning how to respect sacred sites. I am calling my community in to have more conversation about the tensions around what it means to obtain our liberation on stolen and occupied land. Please listen to Indigenous voices on this topic.
As we engage in processes of reconciliation it is critical that land acknowledgements don’t become a token gesture. They are not meant to be static, scripted statements that every person must recite in exactly the same way. They are expressions of relationship, acknowledging not just the territory someone is on, but that person’s connection to that land based on knowledge that has been shared with them.
— Lindsay DuPré- Metis Nation
whose.land/en/whyacknowledge
Learn about the land you are on, and learn from Indigenous people.
native-land.ca/territory-acknowledgement/
A version of this was published by bikepacking.com 10/1/2018. I wrote this as a reflection after returning from the WTF Explorers Bike Summit.