LOST VALLEY educational center DEI STATEMENT OF INTENT

We the Members and Residents of Lost Valley Educational Center pledge to face, acknowledge, and understand to the best of our ability, our individual and collective responsibility to one another, all our relatives of past, present and future so that we may live, learn and teach with greater clarity, vulnerability, honesty and integrity.

With full and heavy hearts and awareness of our own complicity, we acknowledge:

That we currently occupy a territory from which the Kalapuya people were actively and intentionally displaced through force and deception by colonial systems for the benefit of many of our ancestors, and to our own benefit today;

That we as individuals and as a community have consciously and unconsciously treated people with disrespect, judgment, and invalidation because of their expression of marginalized identity, whether through skin color, sexual orientation, gender, class, religion, ability, body size, family status, age, or other individual and cultural differences; and

That we as human beings cannot separate the gift of our own existence from the violence being done to our planet and all other beings with whom we share it through short-sightedness, greed, and a disproportionate sense of self-importance. 

Therefore, we as individuals, as a community and as an Education Center, on behalf of all who came before us and those who will come after, acknowledge our complicity within the entrenched systems of oppression that are woven throughout every aspect of our society. We seek to atone for all systems that perpetuate violence, greed, disrespect, and other forms of harm. We pledge ourselves to challenge and dismantle these forces within ourselves and the world we inhabit for the benefit of all sentient beings. We pledge to co-create a culture of justice, equity, and inclusion, so that all people feel safe, welcomed, and embraced exactly as they are, in their full and unique self-expression.

We seek to be accountable through compassionate listening to the stories of those who have experienced harm, through personal and community reflection and study, through dialogue, classes, workshops and through an ongoing examination of our institutional systems of self-governance.  We pledge to continue to examine and adapt both our behaviors and our systems to support our collective efforts toward greater justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as long as systems of oppression continue to exist.  

In solidarity with all who have experienced harm, we offer this pledge of action. 

The Members and Residents and Staff of Lost Valley Educational Center