Who We Are
How the story began
We are two women (Sonya and Fiona) who started our own journey’s of unlearning as healthcare professionals together in 2016 when we were invited by mentors into our first community cohort experience. At that time we didn’t really know each other and we for sure did not know what we didn’t know (we actually thought we knew a lot!).
We didn’t know we were white, that we were complicit in perpetuating structural Indigenous specific racism. We didn’t know we were causing harm in our practices in healthcare. We didn’t know that we were (are) racist. We didn’t have to know - because it did not affect us or our families and much of our social networks.
We were initially defensive and resistant on many levels to what we were being shown. It was disruptive and we felt alone. We kept digging in and showing up, and opening up.
Now we know that we don’t know!
We know we are racist and (because we have learned that two things can be true at the same time!) that we are still good people….with lots of work to do.
In 2022 we both quit our jobs in healthcare and have focused our time and resources into building Our Unlearning because we have been shown that this work is necessarily collective; necessarily relational.
We are here to make visible our own Unlearning journey and to invite others to join us.
Meet Sonya and Fiona
Unlearners & Spaceholders
Before we introduce ourselves we would like to specifically name the conflict of centering ourselves as two white women in work whose central aim is to decenter whiteness. We feel this tension. We have also been taught and mentored into the important practice of self-location in any relationship.
This work is paradoxical, both/and work and this is a perfect example.
Sonya Gracey (she/they) is a cis queer neurodivergent white settler occupier of Irish and Romanian, Bukovinian ancestry who arrived here in Coast Salish territory over 20 years ago when she settled on the homelands of the Ləkʷəŋən peoples of Songhees (Ləkʷəŋən) and Esquimalt (Xwepsum) Nations. She is a momma to two, and an only child to the late Marion and Peter Gracey; granddaughter of the Mang, Roycroft, Welch and Gracey families. Much of her lineage came here to Turtle Island uninvited over 6 generations ago occupying and benefiting from the homelands of the Haudenosaunee, Mohawk and Anishinaabe Peoples and she was raised on the homelands of the Metis Peoples, and the traditional territories of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Cree and Blackfoot Peoples.
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I have spent the last several years coming to understand what it means to locate myself and what it requires of me. Ultimately, it has led me to see a generational disconnection from my own ancestral stories and knowledge and how my unearned privilege is tied directly to the Dominion Lands act of the 1860s that allotted stolen Indigenous lands to my european ancestors. The impacts of this original harm continued and has grown over generations to benefit me and to harm Indigenous peoples .
Through working alongside Fiona, and by listening and learning from the work of so many powerful Indigenous scholars, mentors and leaders I have come to see that stepping towards and becoming accountable for these truths is my life’s work. I have begun to see how and where I can interrupt colonial thinking and behaviour patterns in myself and the people and systems around me. As I unlearn whiteness and relearn connection and relationship I find ways to contribute meaningfully towards collective justice and intergenerational healing.
I am here in this work because this is where integrity lives for me as a daughter, a mom and a community member living on these sacred, unceded, unsurrendered lands. I have spent the last decade pursuing an understanding of transformational systems change in response to social, environmental and racial injustice, and see the interconnectivity and intersectionality that I am a part of and accountable for. I am currently building my capacity to support others along the necessarily personal and profound journey of disrupting modernity and dominance through group and 1:1 facilitation with a focus on embodied, arts based unlearning.
I am a solo-mom to two kiddos, I love music and dancing in my kitchen, cooking and eating, sketching and pottery, ocean swimming and being in the wildness of the natural world.”
Fiona Devereaux (she/her) is a white settler occupier of Irish ancestry with many social, physical and wellness privileges. She is a daughter, sister, auntie, friend and lifelong learner. Her parents are B and Tom Devereaux, grandparents were Mary Healy, Micheal Dorgan, (Burnfort, Co.Cork), Angie Quinn and Johnny Devereaux (Tullamore, Co. Offaly). Fiona’s family immigrated to the Treaty 6 Territory homeland of the Métis colonially known as Saskatoon for economic opportunity. She grew up on the homelands of the Quw'utsun peoples. Fiona personally and professionally occupies and benefit from unceded, ancestral and stolen homelands of Ləkʷəŋən peoples of Songhees (Ləkʷəŋən) and Esquimalt (Xwepsum) Nations.
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I come to this unlearning humbly and as someone who had many gaps in my understanding of how whiteness and settler colonialism shapes and informs Indigenous specific racism. I was trained within white colonial education systems and continue to undo the stereotypes, misinformation and ways of knowing and being embedded within my education.
In 2015, through mentorship and as a part of my unlearning journey I began co-facilitating the Blanket Exercises and white settler racial caucusing sessions. I have spent the last 9 years digging into this learning, undoing whiteness and settler colonialism within myself. I completed a MSc Social Dimensions of Health, “White Settler Racial Caucusing: Exploring How and to What Extent Racial Caucusing Motivates White Settlers to Address Indigenous-specific Racism.”
Since then, I continue to co-facilitate on a variety of Indigenous anti-racism sessions and curriculums. I ground my facilitation in relational practice, humility, curiosity, vulnerability with critical whiteness and settler colonial lens. Please see my education, training and professional background page for more details about my ongoing learning journey
I am honoured and privileged to have had a long nutrition career working alongside Coast Salish, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities. I acknowledge the resistance, generosity and expansive knowledge that exists within all the Nations. I am beyond humbled for the sharing and learning that help me transform and heal my disconnected dietetics training. I am a lover of food and connecting people to each other and the land through food. Food is Medicine is so many ways.
I am a lifelong learner of plant medicines and enjoy growing, processing and making plant gifts. My life is full with family, friends, hiking, camping, gardening and being among the trees, plants and by water.
Why we do this work:
Notes on Structure and Accountability:
Accountability is central. Structure is emergent.
We are not engaged in this work as an wealth generating endeavor. This is a project of our ongoing living into accountability and the structure of what it is, is still emerging.
We do not want to be an incorporated non-profit or a charity because:
We do not want to divert public resources from IBPOC led endeavors;
The ‘charitable’ model is deeply entrenched in, and by design holding up, the systems we are working to disrupt.
We also do not consider ourselves a for-profit business either since profit has never been our ‘why’. We do see ourselves as entrepreneurial in a way, but in an anti-capitalist way - some call this ‘social-preneurial'.’
A social entrepreneur is a person who pursues novel applications that have the potential to solve community-based problems. These individuals are willing to take on the risk and effort to create positive changes in society through their initiatives.
- www.csef.ca
It is critical for the disruption of settler colonialism, whiteness and Indigenous specific racism that white people; settler people be accountable; collectively.
Accountability refers to an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions.
In order to be accountable in this work we commit to transparency about our actions and remain open to receiving any feedback that is offered.
We are aware that intentions are not the same thing as impact.
As facilitators we are not doing this work alone, we are prioritizing relationships and processes that ensure we are co-unlearners and necessarily not thought or content leaders.
We will make mistakes and we are here for the discomfort and work that will continue to be required of us. Contact us anytime.