Southwest Leaders of Color Expedition: Working to Decolonize Outdoor Spaces
Photo by Mara Gans.
The West Michigan Environmental Action Council recognized environmental justice advocate and sustainable business manager Alice Jasper for participating in a 10-day NOLS backpacking expedition designed for leaders of color in the outdoors. She’s attending this course, focused on decolonizing outdoor spaces, as part of her work with the WGVU Shaping Narratives program.
“It takes a lot to prepare for a ten day backpacking trip through the deserts of New Mexico. “It’s nothing that I’ve really ever done before,” Alice Jasper said…
She is going on this intensive backpacking trip as part of the WGVU Shaping Narratives Program. The program is meant ‘to bring the skills and the resources to community leaders of color to share their own perspectives in the media,’ Jasper said. ‘Ultimately if somebody else is telling your story, to some extent that person’s view, that person’s own lens, is going to shape your story.’ For her own part of the project, she is working to produce a pilot for a TV show, which will focus on changing the narrative of outdoor recreation to show more people of color, as well as dismantling barriers for the growing amount of people of color who are recreationists. Her project aims to allow people to see themselves in the outdoors, in a way they hadn’t before.”
Topics: leaders of color, News, NOLS Southwest
