Dear Community, With great humility, the Earthdance Board of Directors takes full responsibility for the harm that has been caused to Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) at Earthdance. Over the years, our board and leadership have inadequately responded to signals from many parts of our community asking us to pay attention to the impact that systemic racism in the US has on our BIPOC companions, family, community, friends and partners, and to genuinely confront white privilege culture at Earthdance.
Our first step is to share the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Forum that happened in 2017, the report of which became ready in January 2019. Decisions to not post that document have caused distrust amongst the many people who took great risk to participate in that work. We regret these decisions and are sharing the link to the Truth and Reconciliation summary right here, along with a statement from Spirit Joseph, former board president and transitioning interim executive director.
We plan to communicate with you often and directly over the summer as we arrive at further action steps. We are taking a deep look at ourselves and at this organization and trying, as Adrienne Marie Brown, author of Emergent Strategy offers, “to move at the speed of trust.”
We keep this note brief so we can all as a community take this one step at a time, continually moving forward towards equity and an anti-racist future for Earthdance. We are looking for ways to engage a wide variety of community members in dialogues and will share about that in our next letter.
Sincerely, The members of the Earthdance board of directors
Amii LeGendre (president)
Meta Bobbe
Sheila Skemp
Kristin Horrigan
Anne Bloom
Susan Arnsten-Russell
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