Stand Up For Your Community
Aside from our experiences as queer trans Pacific Islanders we know that island nations, whether it be in the Pacific or North America or South America, in low lying islands, low lying countries, are seeing the impacts of climate change because of a dramatic increase in the rise of sea level. There is an urgency in needing to do more, needing to change our ways, because I don’t think anybody can live with the idea of being drowned in their own home. We need to do more as Pacific Islanders, as frontline communities.
— Everly Moey Faleafine, UTOPIA Washington
Everly Moey Faleafine is a Samoan fa’afaine, or trans woman of color. The meaning of the word, fa’afafine, is “way of the woman” in the Samoan language. Growing up in American Samoa, she lived her life “through the lens of being a trans woman of color all my life as a child to becoming a full adult.” Everly now lives in Seattle and works for UTOPIA Washington, and served on the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Wing Luke Museum’s new exhibition, We Are Changing the Tide: Community Power for Environmental Justice, because climate justice is an issue she is deeply committed to.
Communities of color exist at ground zero in the fight for environmental justice. These communities, especially those of Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), and migrant populations worldwide, bear the highest burden from the negative effects of climate change, pollution, environmental degradation, and exploitative industries. We Are Changing the Tide encourages visitors to consider the interconnected nature of the world’s natural and human-made systems, to understand how overlapping harms caused by racism, greed, and environmental destruction affect BIPOC communities, and to take action in their own lives to address these issues.
Everly is spearheading climate justice programming at UTOPIA Washington. Their work is centered on supporting the queer trans Pacific Islander (QTPI) community because, not only as Pacific Islanders, but as queer and trans, they are often left out of resources that are available under the Asian Pacific Islander (API) umbrella and have limited access to healthcare, employment, education, and leadership opportunities.
Queer and trans Pacific Islander and LGBTQ2 (two spirited) community members bear the brunt of climate change. Most of our community members are left out on the streets without homes, without facilities and proper care for personal living. So they really do, first and foremost, experience the impacts of climate change.
While serving on the exhibition CAC, Everly loved the diversity of the people she was working with, and found she had much in common with them. They shared stories and she learned about the different ways their lives are also impacted by climate change.
Working with community members on ways to promote awareness and education around environmental justice was an incredible experience for me. Sharing stories about how AAPI/NH (Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian) families and community members are also experiencing the disruptions and the effects of big aircrafts hovering over their homes, with the sound and air pollution, it just made me realize how selfish life could be. Because these are people trying to include themselves in this space, and I guess the power of money, can be overbearing at some point. It was just hard to hear, these stories about our AAPI/NH communities and what they’re experiencing.
Everly found that the Wing Luke Museum gave her a place to share her QTPI community’s story. She felt welcomed, seen and heard, and that this was a place that felt like home.
…Having that space to share our story, being able to elevate the work that we do at UTOPIA Washington with our climate justice initiatives, made a huge impact on me. The Wing Luke Museum has so much of a sense of belonging. Like we’re able to access and navigate through that space as if it was home for us. Working together with our AAPI/NH community, I feel like I’ve established such a pleasant sense of community love and community care.
The Wing Luke Museum is grounded in being a place of belonging for all of our community members. Through our community process, we share the unique experiences and perspectives of our very diverse community, and We Are Changing the Tide reflects their stories. This Museum is dedicated to this practice, it’s our grounding, and our role as a decolonizing institution is inherent in this work.
Having just arrived from Moku o Keawe (Hawai’i) as the Wing Luke Museum’s first Pilipinx Queer Executive Director, I feel passionate about manifesting aloha across the Austronesian diaspora and beyond. Those fa’afaine, leiti, māhū, and bakla who occupy the liminal, in-between spaces demonstrate the courage, innovation, and aloha needed for systems-level change in this era of pandemic and targeted violence. Celebrating Everly’s story of ancestral connection and land stewardship is the Wing Luke Museum’s raison d'être.
Please join me in making a donation to the Wing Luke Museum, so that we can continue to share stories like Everly’s and the stories highlighted in the We Are Changing the Tide exhibit. Climate change is an immediate threat to frontline communities, and cultural heritage. Your support ensures these stories are heard, and that everyone has a voice and a place here.
Sincerely,
Joël Barraquiel Tan, Executive Director
P.S. The Ford Foundation has generously donated a matching grant. Donate today and your gift will be MATCHED DOLLAR for DOLLAR! You can mail in your donation or visit our website www.wingluke.org to give!