OUR CIRCLE
This is your Team section. It's a great place to introduce your team and talk about what makes it special, such as your culture or work philosophy. Don't be afraid to illustrate personality and character to help users connect with your team.
Bianca Fox Del Mar Ballara is a first generation daughter of Cuban immigrants with Taino/Arawak blood native to the Caribbean. Lycan El Lobo Coss is a two-spirit of Mexican immigrants with Aztec blood native to this land. Individually, they each hold many receipts in starting, stewarding and maintaining community land projects in the Rogue Valley area.
Together they are long-term organizers for Indigenous, Black, Brown, LGBTQ and environmental rights and are committed to using their privilege and connections to get Queer & BIPOC community back on Land as is their desire, their calling and their birthright.
We are holding space for the many various visiting Indigenous tribes of BIPOC diaspora while intending to honor the Tribes native to this land: the Takelma, Galice, Klamath, Shasta, Latgawa and so on.
We can’t do this perfectly, but our intention is to do it well, continue learning and invite everyone to join in supporting this decolonizing healing center.
ABOUT
NATIVEWOMANSHARE
Indigenous landscape held by Takelma and First Nations Women and Two-Spirit for community healing, land healing, art and culture.
Originally named Womanshare, what began as a radical project to hold safe haven for lesbian women in the woods during the 1970's until today has been acquired and evolved into a matriarchal space that now invites the original stewards, Native women and Two-Spirit people, as they thrive and reclaim their land-based culture.
Together, the current Womanshare owners and the new incoming stewards, see this as a chance for beauty, justice and reparations in action.
We live in a unique time of crisis: COVID-19, White supremacy, Ecological crisis and economic crisis. The times in which we live is are of great need for social, environmental and spiritual justice.
We know that this land has been tended intimately by the Takelma and neighboring tribes for thousands of years where every plant, animal and stone was a relative, before colonization stole the land.
We know lands in the Rogue Valley and abroad are worked and tended persistently by Black and People of Color from the times of slavery to modern-day farmworking.
Indigenous and First Nations women now need their own land to thrive and connect to nature's healing while restoring traditional land stewardship to save our valley from the ongoing threat of devastating forest fires and climate change.
Expressing our gratitude by giving back:
We believe Takelma and Inter-Tribal women & two-spirit deserve to tend these lands and restore themselves and the land to native well-being.
Our vision:
-
5 or 6 First Nations Women & Two-Spirit healing residents on land
-
Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous Land Stewardship to fill the landscape with native plant seeds, first foods and medicines
-
Ritual and Ceremony
-
Hosting local and visiting Elders and Inter-generational Healing
-
Honoring the local TAKELMA Tribe and Inter-Tribal inclusion
-
Reclaiming art, culture, ancestral heritage
-
In Rogue Valley, OR
NativeWomanshare intends to model and hold space for Takelma and Inter-Tribal women not only surviving but THRIVING on land with home, water, garden space & community.
WHO ARE WE?
Bianca Fox Del Mar Ballara is a first generation daughter of Cuban immigrants with Taino/Arawak blood native to the Caribbean. Lycan El Lobo Coss is a two-spirit of Mexican immigrants with Aztec blood native to this land. Individually, they each hold many receipts in starting, stewarding and maintaining community land projects in the Rogue Valley area.
Together they are long-term organizers for Indigenous, Black, Brown, LGBTQ and environmental rights and are committed to using their privilege and connections to get Queer & BIPOC community back on Land as is their desire, their calling and their birthright.
We are holding space for the many various visiting Indigenous tribes of BIPOC diaspora while intending to honor the Tribes native to this land: the Takelma, Galice, Klamath, Shasta, Latgawa and so on.
We can’t do this perfectly, but our intention is to do it well, continue learning and invite everyone to join in supporting this decolonizing healing center.
"May Indigenous, Black and Brown people rise worldwide and heal alongside our Mother Earth.
May the Indigenous earth-based peoples and cultures of the earth thrive and prosper.
We hope to serve NATIVEWOMANSHARE as a sanctuary to Native women and Two-Spirit who need it most and whose medicine we wish to uplift.
We intend to serve this land in indigenous restoration, thousand-year old heritage seeds and ancient love.
Ultimately may we all rejoice, celebrate and find gratitude in the gifts of the nature that keep on giving."