Corvallis recently had an election for four open school board positions. The candidates all varied on stances about anti-racism, schools’ inclusivity policies, and many different ideas and opinions on other current and future policies.
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| Photo from a feature story from liberalarts.oregonstate.edu |
Luhui Whitebear, an advocate, hiker, poet, and mom ran for and now is in the fourth spot on the Corvallis School Board.
Many people might recognize Whitebear from her work as the Center Director of the Kaku-Ixt Mana Ina Haws at Oregon State University, or from her activism work for the Indigenous community. She is also an enrolled member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation in California, which is where she grew up.
She also teaches classes at OSU including culture, society and ethnic studies, women’s gender and sexuality studies, and queer studies.
Whitebear expressed joy and validation of being voted into her spot, instead of being appointed, as she was last year. She said, “[It] makes me really happy because that shows that the community is ready for some changes that will positively impact all students.”
She is really motivated to keep building on the work that has already begun on the anti-racism and trans-inclusive front.
During her campaign, Whitebear was extremely adamant about working on several issues in our schools.
She wants to continue to advocate for staff and students and find different ways to fully engage Corvallis’ community. She said the reason why is that "I don't want to keep waiting for people to come to me with their issues. I want to be able to catch them beforehand and deal with them head on."
With that, she said she plans on doing some serious updating of current policies and making new policies. Whitebear wants to find ways to include and help benefit more people with these updates.
"One of our more recent suggestions when documents list out identity groups, is to add gender expression instead of just gender because of the experiences of discrimination based on gender expression." By this she's referencing the 'anonymous' assessments the school makes students fill out which will out them.
Whitebear wants to "offer better support for students... and assess if there's a language that might exclude people and find out ways to change that."
For her, a lot of the work she has been doing is educating people. Shown by the 70.84% voter turnout polls, she says that people really seem to be on board with her ideas.
Whitebear is extremely confident in her abilities because of her previously being appointed to the role. She said that having the skill of time management and being more well-established in her other jobs, she thinks that the workload of being on the board officially will affect her other jobs less.
In fact, she thinks her stance on the school board will benefit her positions as an advocate for BIPOC communities as well as her position as Center Director of K-IMIH.
Whitebear stresses that it helps to "not go 110% on all of the things you're doing. [I] just balance it out... That's a skill I've learned over the years because it's easy to burn yourself out all at once." She also said that "it's okay to shift your time around so that you can still rest because that's really important too," in regard to other, possibly younger people wanting to start advocacy work.
She said that just like anyone, she still gets stressed out sometimes, but has practiced and learned the importance of planning for break times.
"I've been learning about the role of rest in activism... I want to have that in my life because it is about honoring yourself and reclaiming your personal time so you can come at your work refreshed and with a new energy or mindset."
That said, Whitebear has a few things that she enjoys doing to help herself out when things are stressful.
She really enjoys going on hikes, expressing herself through poetry, cooking and baking, gardening, and spending time with her family.
Whitebear also discussed that she practices cultural-specific grounding rituals that she learned as she was growing up.
In regard to the healing rituals, she tries to practice often, “I’d say if folk have those, they shouldn't be embarrassed to rely on them. If folk don't have them, I think it's never too late to reconnect with your ancestors regardless of your identities. They can do research on exercises and find which ones might work better for them. Nourishment and relaxation are so important, especially if you're doing the kind of work I do.”
Speaking to the young people who are struggling with any 'isms', Whitebear emphasized that it's important for them to understand that it has nothing to do with them as individuals. "The sooner people come to that understanding and feel it and know that it's not because of them, it's because of other people’s issues and the systems, the better and easier their work might come."
As a young Indigenous woman, she struggled with this as well when she began advocacy work more seriously.
“It’s very easy for people, especially those who are systematically marginalized, to internalize things that are said and done to them.” She advises anyone interested in any activism to go find somebody who has been in the area for a while. “It's really helpful to look at things from an intergenerational standpoint and not think you have to do everything all over again.” Whitebear said that this is something important to think about, especially in communities where the activism has had to have been happening for years or even decades prior. With the work she does as an activist, most of it is intergenerational because of how deep and systematically racism and misogyny are spread throughout history.
Whitebear also stresses the importance that “young people [should] use their voice and be active, but not at the expense of their emotional labor.” What she means by this is that there are many queer and/or BIPOC who are activists who are expected to relive their trauma in order to appeal and force people to understand their position. And the white-centered idea around what activism should look like, affects this a lot as well: Especially for young people.
With her own past experiences in making these boundaries, Whitebear explained that “we need to uplift students who have to go through that as much as we uplift straight or non-BIPOC students. We shouldn't be the only ones needing to prove our strife and relive our trauma to be in the same leadership positions as non-marginalized people and be able to make changes.”
Trauma should never be an expectation to be a good activist.
Whitebear has obviously gone through her fair share of experiences. She lived in the San Luis Obispo area of Southern California until she was a teenager and moved to Oregon.
Because of California being more of a “melting pot” than Oregon, there are many more BIPOC in the area. Whitebear explained that in Southern California, the xenophobia was bad in the way she experienced it because the comments "were often rooted in the assumptions people make about my identity based on how I look or present myself.”
She thinks it's interesting as an Indigenous Woman with ancestry in Mexico and in California that those are the only things people want to be racist about. It’s never rooted in looking further than how one first meets the eye.
She says that even in Oregon, racism and xenophobia isn’t really experienced differently because of the way society has been trained to view Indigenous women as “objects of desire”.
She says that almost wherever she goes, the 'isms' are quite consistent. Whitebear did say, however, that “I'm always on my toes for different reasons. Because of my work with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and knowing what the I-5 means for human trafficking, I'm always thinking about things a bit differently."
Whitebear hopes that being on the school board for the next four years will make people feel that the Corvallis School District is a place where they can belong.
She shares that her own K-12 experience was difficult, so she understands that being a student or employee in the environment is difficult as well.
“That's why I like thinking about problems systematically. Not just "Wow, this person is making a problem." It's more of what systems are in place that support this behavior and how it can be changed.”
She wants people to see themselves in her position because she thinks it's important for young people to see themselves as what they could be instead of what the system says they will be.
Whitebear wants people to feel safe coming to her with their concerns and wants them to understand that “I’m one voice on a governing body, so I can only do so much,” but that she believes she works with people who will understand and do their best to help.
She understands that historically, our governing systems were not designed for people like her: They were made to keep other systems in place to prevent creating systemic change.
That said, she is glad to be working closely with a group of people committed to creating this change. She points out that some of the work was already started even before she or other board members were there; again, building on her point of the importance of intergenerational work.
“I don't want to dismiss the work that was done because I think it's really important to help intervene and improve what's already there.”
Whitebear also understands that the changes she and the other members plan to make might make some people uncomfortable. She is confident, however, that continuing the momentum will make them see how it positively affects everybody in their community.
"Being able to understand each other, our identities, and our histories can help us understand and respect each other better."
Whitebear expresses her gratitude to the team of school board members who appointed her last year and said that because of them, she felt confident that she would be able to campaign for and possibly earn the position.
She states that without them, she would never have thought about herself in the position, and she’ll always be grateful to them for taking the initial step for her.