Ethos Magazine Spring 2021

Spring 2021 Volume 12 Issue 3

Cover Photo by Jozie Donaghey

Words of Power Ethos invited UO students to share their experiences surviving sexual violence. Here are their stories.

Contents.

26 Barriers to Help 06 Eating in Isolation Eating disorders have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Here’s why.

18 Women Defend Themselves The UO women’s self-defense class teaches students to hold their ground and fight back.

30 Fighting for the Fish

10 No Stimulus for Students Dependents, even those who work, didn’t get direct payments under the first two stimulus packages.

14 Indigenous Education The K-12 curriculum in Oregon now includes Indigenous topics, sparking hope for a more inclusive future.

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Latinx businesses received disproportionately small amounts of PPP money because of systemic barriers.

22 An Inclusive Place for Hair A hair collective in Eugene will cut your hair no matter your race, gender or sexuality. That can’t be said for many salons and barbershops.

Indigenous people fight to help at-risk salmon populations and to maintain their fishing traditions.

35 Never be Silenced UO students share their stories of experiencing and healing from sexual assault.

Our Mission: Ethos is a nationally recognized, award-winning independent student publication. Our mission is to elevate the voices of marginalized people who are underrepresented in the media landscape, and to write in-depth, human-focused stories about the issues affecting them. We also strive to support our diverse student staff and help them find future success. Ethos produces a quarterly free print magazine full of well-reported and powerful feature stories, innovative photography, creative illustrations and eye-catching design. On our website, we also produce compelling written and multimedia stories.

Ethos is part of Emerald Media Group, a non-profit organization that’s fully independent of the University of Oregon. Students maintain complete editorial control over Ethos, and work tirelessly to produce the magazine. Since our inception as Korean Ducks Magazine in 2005, we’ve worked hard to share a multicultural spirit with our readership. We embrace diversity in our stories, in our student staff and in our readers. We want every part of the magazine to reflect the diversity of our world.

Email editor@ethosmagonline.com with comments, questions, complaints and story ideas. You can find our past issues at issuu.com/ethosmag and more stories, including multimedia content, at ethosmagonline.com

Letter from the editor When I became the editor in chief of Ethos in June 2020, I wrote a new mission statement for the magazine: “to elevate the voices of marginalized people who are underrepresented in the media landscape.” That’s what I think a publication committed to multiculturalism and diversity should do. If good examples of traditional journalism “speak truth to power,” modern journalism should be more proactive and attempt to also give power to those who don’t have it because of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of discrimination.

For the Spring 2021 issue of Ethos, writer Mariah Botkin fulfills Ethos’ mission in her story about how Latinx business owners faced systemic barriers to Paycheck Protection Program loans when many white business owners didn’t. Chelsea Pitarresi writes about a hair studio that acts as a safe space for people of color and queer people who don’t feel comfortable at gendered, white-dominated barbershops and hair salons in Eugene. And in his story for the magazine, Clayton Franke helps elevate the concerns of Indigenous people about declining salmon populations, something that threatens their way of life.

Though these stories all shed light on important issues that affect some of the most marginalized groups of people in Eugene, all of their voices are filtered through the skilled — but human and flawed, and yeah, biased, as much as we try not to be — writers and editors at Ethos. Inevitably, we choose which ideas get weight over others, which sources we interview and what quotes get included in the final story. In this way, a written journalistic story can never just be a megaphone for the people it covers because it contains the writer’s voice as well.

That’s why for the cover project for this cycle, our photo editor, Jozie Donaghey, asked UO community members to write directly for the magazine about their experiences with sexual violence, removing the filters of reporters and editors. “I took back my voice. I took back my story. I took back my power...” writes Jozie, a sexual assault survivor herself, about when she first publicly shared her experience with sexual violence.

I hope that this project, and Ethos in general, can help people feel the same way as Jozie did when she shared her story.

Jade Yamazaki Stewart

Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 3

Creative Editorial Editor in Chief Jade Yamazaki Stewart Managing Editor Nick Rosenberger Associate Editors Sam Nguyen Caleb Barber Writers Lauren Brown Clayton Franke Shannon Golden Ella Hutcherson Anna Mattson Chelsea Pitarresi Emily Topping Mariah Botkin Fact-checking Editor Madeline Ryan Fact Checkers Lauren Brown Shannon Golden Ella Hutcherson Mariah Botkin Lily Sinkovitz

Photography Photo Editor Jozie Donaghey Photojournalists Amalia Birch Summer Surgent Eric Woodall Isabel Lemus Kristensen Natalie Myking Elle Wayt Julia Page

Art Director Emma Nolan Designers Samantha Shevey Chloe Friedenberg Makena Hervey

Multimedia Creative

Multimedia Director Jassy McKinley Art Director Emma MultimediaNolan Assistant Emma Askren Designers Danielle Lewis Sasha Producers Heye Multimedia Chloe Friedenberg Natalie Schechtel Makena Hervey Kevin Wang

Social Media Social Media Director Jourdan Cerillo Copywriting Lead Lauryn Cole Production Assistant Jaila Cha-Sim

Business President and Publisher Bill Kunerth VP of Operations Kathy Carbone Director of Sales & Marketing Shelly Rondestvedt Creative Director Sam Rudkin

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PLANNED

Find us at dailyemerald.com/ethos

PARENTHOOD

SOUTHERN

OREGON

Make an appointment by calling

541.344.9411 today! www.ppsworegon.org Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 5

Reading more books last summer was something Niese says she wanted to do to expand her knowledge, especially about eating disorders. “I’m really passionate about anti-diet and stuff like that,” Niese says. “One of my favorite books, ‘The F*ck It Diet,’ pretty much talks about how to stop restricting in order to have food freedom, and how you don’t have to follow all these rules that society has made up about eating.”

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CONTENT ADVISORY: This story contains descriptions of eating disorders.

Fighting with Food Written by Anna Mattson Photos by Natalie Myking

Students’ eating disorders have worsened during the pandemic as they cope with added stress.

I

t was a bright June day when 19-year-old Parker Rosay-Miller felt a familiar dizziness. When she stood up to get out of her car, a wave of light-headedness that felt like TV static rolled over her. Her head pounded.

The feeling started during a 15-minute drive to her boyfriend's house. She felt weak in the car, but the dizziness didn't hit her until she stood up. It continued throughout the day whenever she'd stand and sit.

Rosay-Miller remembers promising herself that she wouldn't eat until dinner. She thought that the feeling of hunger and faintness was a promising thing, a sign that she was on the right track to reach her weight-loss goals.

That visit in June was the first time she'd seen her boyfriend's dad in months. He and Rosay-Miller were very close.

He called her the daughter he never had, and she wished him Happy Father's day. When he saw how much her body had changed, he was worried.

"He kept commenting about how thin I looked. I've never seen him concerned," she says. "That made me realize there was an issue."

Her physical appearance shocked him because, unlike her closer family and friends, he didn’t see her every day. That day was a major indicator to Rosay-Miller that she finally needed to get help.

University of Oregon sophomore Rosay-Miller is one of the millions of people struggling with eating disorders right now. The external stress and isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused her, and many others, to relapse into body insecurity and disordered-eating behaviors.

Increased stress during the pandemic has caused eating disorders to worsen nationally. The International Eating Disorder Journal conducted a study that revealed 62 percent of people with anorexia experienced an increased fear of food since the pandemic started. Nearly a third of people who deal with bulimia or binge-eating disorder have also had an increase in symptoms.

The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated

Disorders reports that 28.8 million Americans will have had an eating disorder in their lifetime.

According to the National Eating Disorders Association, people who deal with a lot of external stress sometimes use food as a coping mechanism because it offers feelings of comfort and control.

Rosay-Miller first noticed a change in her mental state in March 2020 during the first wave of infections. She says she was dealing with an emotionally abusive relationship with her boyfriend at the time, and she was also one of the many freshmen sent home from the dorms spring term. Being away from friends made it difficult for her to find support when her relationship started to take a turn for the worse. For RosayMiller, part of her pandemic stress came from her inability to go out or do anything to distract from the chaos happening around her.

“At those points, I definitely turned to the eating disorder for coping skills. I just thought it was the only thing that could have actually helped," she says. "It was super traumatic and unhealthy."

Compounding stress-filled situations often exacerbate disordered-eating behaviors, according to Nichole Kelly, an assistant professor at the UO College of Education who researches eating behaviors and body image. Kelly says feeling depressed, anxious or chronically stressed can be related to different disordered-eating patterns. There haven't been many studies done on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected eating disorders yet. Still, Kelly does know, based on data from previous studies, that stress and eating-disorder behaviors directly correlate.

"Feelings that we don't like, that are uncomfortable and that are distressing to us are prominent risk factors for disordered eating," she says. "There's no reason not to think that living through something like this would exacerbate disordered eating."

The stress that accompanied the pandemic only provoked issues that Rosay-Miller had been dealing with since early childhood. Her past with body insecurity resurfaced during the start of the pandemic.

Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 7

“My journal has been such an outlet for me. It doesn’t talk back, and there is so much self reflection that takes place when writing,” Niese says. “I am able to hear my healthy voice better when journaling. I feel that I can better discern between ED thoughts and my soul self.... I journal the good times when I want to remember the joys of recovery. I also journal the times when I’m struggling and it is very cathartic.”

The first time she says she felt aware of how her body should look was when she was nine years old, walking back from the lunchroom. She was wearing leggings and a crop top, which accentuated her body's shape. She put her hand on her stomach and felt it protrude. Her stomach was bloated after lunch, a natural reaction after eating. Rosay-Miller sucked in and manipulated her body so that she didn't bring attention to herself.

"I felt like people were just looking at me," she says. "And I felt like I needed to continue the standard of what I've always looked like."

Rosay-Miller says that she was always aware that she thought of food and her body differently from other kids her age.

She'd often been told that her body was beautiful and perfect while growing up. This was difficult for Rosay-Miller because it convinced her that beauty was the most important thing about her. It was a constant thought that existed in her mind from childhood through college. Those compliments brought a lot of social pressure.

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"I never brought it up to anybody. I didn't think that it was that big of a deal because I wasn't emaciated," she says. "People constantly comment on my appearance. And I think I internalized it as the only thing that matters for me."

Her eating-disorder behaviors during quarantine started innocently. She wanted to go on a couple of runs here and there after not exercising much during her in-person education. But then it got out of hand.

"It was almost subconscious at the beginning," she says.

"I started tracking my weight with the scale. I started to realize what I was getting into, but I still couldn't stop."

In less than two months, Rosay-Miller lost 20 pounds.

She says that part of the reason why she started developing unhealthy behaviors was from the pressure online to be thin.

Headlines like "Tips for Staying Fit During COVID-19" and "The Pandemic Diet: How to Lose the 'Quarantine 15" have had an increased circulation around the internet recently. Headlines like these or social media posts about “thinspiration” are major contributors to body insecurity, according to Project Know, a

..national directory for addiction resources created by the American Addiction Center. The website says that while social media itself doesn't give someone an eating disorder, those platforms can facilitate comparisons and competition.

"It's like just another thing on top of every other person telling me to look attractive," Rosay-Miller says. That pressure worsened for her during the pandemic. "Take the terrible parts of social media and increase that frequency and intensity by a million."

Maddy Niese, a 20-year-old Oregon State University student, struggles with navigating social media's weight loss culture. She uses her Instagram, @maddysrecoveryjourney, to show the intimate parts of her recovery from her eating disorder so that others won’t feel alone. Niese started the account in September 2020. She says she wanted to use her account to keep herself inspired in times of self-doubt. Niese also wanted to start a conversation about eating disorders in general and let others see the world of the slippery slope of healing.

"Diet culture is everywhere," she says. "I don't want to log on and see someone posting about calories or a healthy version of a drink or something like that. Curating my feed to be bodypositive has been really important."

Like Rosay-Miller, Niese has a long history of eating-disorder behaviors. She's been in and out of recovery for more than nine years. Her past experiences were amplified by pandemic-related stress and social pressures. The transition to online school was one of the biggest hurdles for Niese. She refers to it as "an insurmountable amount of stress."

Treatment for Niese and Rosay-Miller were two very similar processes. Both included online outpatient treatments, which consisted of virtual Zoom meetings where patients would eat meals together daily. Rosay-Miller says the best thing about the

outpatient program was the structure it provided.

For Niese, the inpatient program process was difficult because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For a while, she had to go into a facility because of the severity of her condition. She says many people lived in the same house, which made it hard to enforce proper social distancing and COVID-19 prevention protocols.

"There's also a huge waiting list," she says. "There's just so many people reaching for those resources."

She urges others who've been fighting a similar battle with eating disorders to reach out for help. Even if someone isn't diagnosed with an eating disorder, Niese says, many people might be struggling with unnoticed unhealthy habits.

"I feel like a lot of people, even if they don't have an eating disorder, have an unhealthy relationship with food or exercise," she says. "I want to be able to share what recovery is really like.

It's not about eating your food. It's so much more about finding your identity as a human."

People of every age, race, gender identity, sexual orientation and background are subject to unhealthy eating-disorder behaviors, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.

Niese says that eating disorders, similar to any other mental illness, are not a choice. However, she also says those who are struggling always have the option to choose recovery.

"People should not have to be worrying about their weight right now. We are in a global pandemic," she says. "I almost want to say this to my past self: It is possible. It is possible to live a life of freedom."

"It's not about eating your food. It's so much more about finding your identity as a human."

Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 9

Hannah Jaques, a third-year student at the University of Oregon, shows off the workstation of one of the foster kids she helps take care of. Since starting school again in fall 2020, Jacques has had to juggle her schoolwork with her nine-to-10-hour shifts working at this foster home to help make ends meet. “When I started working, I was able to have consistent paychecks coming in, but even so, it’s not enough,” Jaques says. (Photo submitted by Hannah Jacques)

Written by Ella Hutcherson Photos by Julia Page

DEPENDENTS PAY THE PRICE Dependent college students didn't receive direct checks from the first two stimulus packages and are struggling financially.

W

hen the University of Oregon shut down in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, second-year student Rory Sweeney left Eugene unemployed and with no idea what her future would hold. She had lost her job in dining services that same week and wasn’t sure when or if the position would become available again.

Sweeney was jobless for three months. After a spring full of searching for work, she took on a position as an entrance coronavirus screener at Coquille Valley Hospital. She worked 40 hours a week for $11.25 an hour. And when COVID-19 cases began cropping up in the hospital in mid-July, it became increasingly stressful to go to work every day.

“I was making minimum wage, getting no hazard pay, no paid time off,” Sweeney says. “And there was no option to not work because I have to pay thousands in student loans. I needed all of that money and funding.”

Sweeney continued to work at the hospital until she returned to the University of Oregon in September. She regained her job at Hamilton Dining and was promoted to shift lead, a position that oversees all food stations in the building and pays $13.00 an hour. The work has gotten more stressful this year, she says, with multiple new COVID-19 protocols to juggle on top of continuing anxieties about her safety.

Sweeney now attends classes full-time and works up to 25 hours a week. Her parents pay her $700 rent, leaving Sweeney responsible for groceries, car insurance, gas, university tuition and fees. In addition to these expenses, the three months of unemployment she faced in the spring have forced her to take out about $5,000 in student loans, five times more than she initially planned. Receiving economic assistance from the government, she says, would have made day-to-day life much more manageable.

But when stimulus checks reached millions of Americans’ bank accounts in the spring of 2020 and winter of 2021, Sweeney received nothing. She was claimed as a dependent on her parents’ tax returns, rendering her and 15 million other dependents in the U.S. ineligible for the stimulus money.

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Adult dependents are people ages 19 and older who rely on another taxpayer for financial support. These people, 54 percent of whom are students, were left out of the first two rounds of stimulus checks aimed to ease economic hardships caused by COVID-19. Working college students’ exclusion from the federal stimulus has forced many to take on additional work and loans to stay afloat, all while fighting the negative mental health impacts of a global pandemic.

The third pandemic economic relief package passed by the Senate on March 6, 2021, includes adult dependents and 17- and 18-year-olds in the list of those receiving $1,400 payments. This payment is added to the household total, rather than provided to dependents directly. Many people have already recieved their checks, but experts say it may take months for all of them to be paid out. For the 15 million dependents who who didn't receive aid before, this package may provide some relief.

Americans have reaped the benefits of two direct stimulus checks since the pandemic began. American adults receiving less than $75,000 a year received $1,200 in the spring of 2020 and $600 in the winter. Adults receiving between $75,000 and $87,000 a year received a smaller amount. No one above that threshold received a payment. Eligible married couples filing jointly received $2,400 in spring and $1,200 in winter. Parents of children under 17 received $500 in spring and $600 in winter for each child claimed as a dependent.

Parents of dependents between the ages of 17 and 24 did not receive any extra money, and these dependents did not receive any stimulus. Claiming college students as dependents is typically appealing to parents because it makes them eligible for tax credits. This year, doing so excluded students from receiving much-needed economic assistance.

Inclusion in a third package does not erase the challenges these dependents already endured. Gilbert Rogers, Assistant Director of the UO Financial Wellness Center, says many working college students found themselves in financially unstable situations during the pandemic, and that losing out on government stimulus has not helped.

“It put a lot of dependent students who were out working, making money on their own, in a rough situation,” Rogers says. “When you’re in that middle area, you kind of got left out, unfortunately.”

Darren Diga, a third-year UO student and a receptionist for Tykeson College and Career Advising, says that a year without help has left her incredibly frustrated.

“If anyone needs it, we do,” Diga says. “Having a financial burden and knowing that the government can’t help you because you don’t fit their qualifications sucks. There are things I have to pay for too, you know?”

Diga was scheduled to work 15 hours a week at Tykeson Advising before the initial shutdown in March 2020. After her office went entirely remote, her hours were cut by more than a third to accommodate for a reduction in student traffic. For three months, she worked from home in Hawaii while continuing to pay rent on her house in Eugene, picking up shifts from her coworkers to supplement her reduced income. She tried to apply for unemployment benefits but was unsuccessful.

Part-time workers generally aren’t qualified for traditional unemployment benefits. Some states even have restrictions that specifically prevent students from achieving eligibility. The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program has temporarily expanded benefits to include part-time workers, specifically those who are unable to work due to COVID-19. But states are individually responsible for administering the program, and due to outdated computer systems and systematic errors, Oregon’s employment department left thousands without benefits for months and passed others over entirely.

Some individuals were denied unemployment based on a technicality. Diga says she received a phone call from PUA informing her that she was ineligible for benefits because she worked for a university, even though she was a part-time worker and student whose hours had been affected

by COVID-19.

Despite the challenges, Diga says that continuing to work allowed her to remain almost entirely self-supporting throughout the last year, regardless of her status as an adult dependent.

“I’m pretty proud that I’ve been able to take care of myself, even my rent,” she says. “My mom didn’t have to help me at all.”

To claim a dependent on tax returns, taxpayers must cover more than half of their dependent’s expenses. But parents often claim their working college students, as they have for years, without much consideration for how their financial situations have changed. And between tuition, fees, student loans and rent, 50 percent is still a tremendous

Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 11

Rory Sweeney looks to her next ticket order during her shift at Hamilton Dining Hall’s Gastro Kitchen at the University of Oregon, where she works 25 hours a week. As a Student Service Leader, Sweeney not only prepares food orders but also makes sure other student workers get breaks during shifts.

amount for student workers to pay. At the University of Oregon, for example, tuition and fees are about $14,000 per year for instate students and $39,000 for out-of-state students.

holding me down to Eugene. I could really be anywhere. But my roommate and I signed a lease, and we don’t want to break that lease.”

Hannah Jaques’ parents cover her tuition and leave her responsible for paying her rent. Jaques, a third-year student at the UO, was planning to go home to California to work a restaurant job for the summer before COVID-19 hit. For safety reasons, she ended up staying in Oregon, suddenly without a plan for how she would pay for housing.

After a stressful spring, Jaques got a job as a personalized social worker at a foster home, where she currently cares for three girls with different disabilities. Throughout the summer, she worked 40 hours a week, but upon returning to school in the fall, she was forced to drop to 20 hours.

When stay-at-home orders were enacted in March 2020, a majority of states introduced eviction moratoria to protect renters and their homes. On Sept. 1, 2020, the CDC announced a halt on evictions at the federal level for those who could not make rent due to the pandemic. The Biden administration has since renewed the moratorium to last through March 2021.

However, the order only protects those facing economic challenges because of the pandemic. Students working lowwage jobs and paying for a high cost of living were already in precarious financial situations prior to COVID-19, and do not necessarily qualify for protection. According to UO Advocates, a campus volunteer organization, 42 percent of surveyed UO students were sometimes or often concerned that they would not be able to cover their housing costs during the pandemic.

Jaques says that uncertainties brought on by COVID-19 in addition to her preexisting financial obligations, have made her uneasy about her living situation.

“It’s made me question everything I’m doing,” Jaques says.

“I’m paying rent for an apartment in Eugene, but there’s nothing 12 | ETHOS | Spring 2021

Jaques’ shifts at the foster home are between nine and 10 hours long, and when she gets home, she says the last thing she wants to do is open her computer and do schoolwork.

Her classes are rigorous and time-consuming, preventing her from working as much as she’d like to in order to be financially comfortable. Her rent is $747 a month, and her monthly paycheck is $900 before taxes, leaving her with less than $153 to fulfill other needs.

“When I was working 40 hours, I was able to very comfortably pay my rent here,” Jaques says. “With school, I can’t work as much. Now my paychecks aren’t as great, and I’ve noticed that in the last months I’m not as comfortable.”

Jaques is not the only student worker to feel her university workload impacting her finances. Many students have had to make difficult decisions in the last year when it comes to balancing work and school. Since the onset of COVID-19 in the U.S., dropout rates have increased, particularly among lowincome students. According to a U.S. Census survey, 42 percent of students who didn’t return to classes in the fall cited “unable to pay after income loss” as their reason.

Illustrations by Vanessa Marach

Additionally, working through the pandemic while navigating a full course load online has had a negative emotional toll on many students. Kat Abrams, a third-year student at the UO, says that she has struggled with her mental health throughout the last year.

Abrams joined the Corona Corps in September, in addition to her job as a student receptionist at Tykeson Advising, and works around 22 hours a week between the two. At the end of the fall quarter, she says she found herself either working or doing homework during every hour of the day.

“Last term it was too much. I kind of broke down by the end,” Abrams says.

Job losses and financial insecurity caused by the pandemic have severely impacted mental health in many young adults. According to Kaiser Family Foundation, 56 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds have reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder in the last year.

42% of students surveyed were sometimes or often worried they couldn't pay for housing. *

Four out of five students experienced some form of financial hardship during COVID-19. *

80% of students work while in college but still can't afford the cost of living and tuition. **

* UO Advocates ** Georgia University CEW

For the sake of her mental health, Abrams says she is taking fewer classes so that she can focus on work and on herself. She has been able to rely on her parents to ease some of the financial strain of the last year, an option she says she feels extremely lucky to have.

“Obviously, I want this stimulus money to go toward those that need it the most,” Abrams says. “But going to college is so expensive, and I do think that there are college students that could definitely benefit from the stimulus money.”

Stimulus packages in 2020 were structured similarly to bills passed during other crises, such as the 2008 recession. Adult dependents were also not included in these packages. But this recession is unlike the crisis in 2008, when students continued to attend universities in-person and consistently kept their on-campus jobs.

According to a College Lab/Axios poll, 38 percent of college students lost work following the shutdown in March 2020.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research institute that analyzes federal budget priorities, says that the added cost of including adult dependents in stimulus relief is minimal and that there was “no clear policy rationale” for the decision to exclude them from these benefits in the first two packages.

For many students, the damage of a year without federal assistance has already been done, even with $1,400 checks on their way. Sweeney says the events of the last year have increased her student loans to a degree that will permanently impact her financial security.

Right now, she’s working as much as she can without compromising her education, and it’s still not enough.

“The goal of the stimulus is to help the working class.

I feel like I’m a part of the working class. I do work, and I provide for the economy,” Sweeney says. “I have a need for income, but I can only do so many hours of work per week.

And I believe the stimulus would have helped me balance that out.”

Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 13

Written by Shannon Golden Photos by Natalie Myking

Righting the Curriculum After decades of work by educators, activists and tribal members, Indigenous culture and history is now a mandatory part of K-12 curriculum in Oregon.

S

econd grade teacher Nicole Butler-Hooton begins her yearly Native American unit with a word association exercise. On a whiteboard, she writes the words, “Native American,” “Indian” and “Indigenous people.” She asks her second grade students what images come to mind when they see those words. Together, the class compiles a list.

Each year, students bring up some of the most prominent stereotypes: bow and arrows, long hair, teepees and fighting.

After this exercise, Butler-Hooton shares that she is an Indigenous woman herself. She shows the class photos of her grandparents and teaches them a few words in her language, Siletz Dee-ni.

Butler-Hooton is an enrolled tribal member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the San Carlos Apache Tribe. For her, teaching students about tribal culture and history is part of everyday life.

“As a Native community, we are alive. We are resilient,” she says. “That resiliency is what I want to come across in my teaching.”

But growing up in Reedsport, Oregon, Butler-Hooton didn't have any teachers of color. And she says she didn’t embrace who she was until college, where she met teachers like her and discovered programs designed to support Indigenous students.

When she began teaching at Irving Elementary School in north Eugene 15 years ago, there were no requirements for teachers to implement Indigenous curriculum in their classrooms.

Butler-Hooton is one of many educators, activists and tribal members who have worked for years to incorporate Indigenous history into their classrooms. In 2017, their work paid off when the Oregon legislature enacted Senate Bill 13, making Indigenous education mandatory in every K-12 public school district in the state. Now, educators and officials are working together to decolonize the American education system and teach the next generation about Oregon’s tribal history.

During her second year at Irving, Butler-Hooton had a student in class who identified as Native American. She noticed that during class, he would write about his family’s customs, like drumming and beading. She wanted to support her student and

14 | ETHOS | Spring 2021

the pride he had for his culture. She reached out to his family and began working with them to build a Native American unit.

Together, they organized assemblies for the school with dancing and drumming. The student’s grandfather came in to teach about tribal culture for several years after the student left Butler-Hooton’s class. “This was an organic, unique way for students to feel accepted and for other kids to ask questions and experience excitement in learning about a new culture that was different from their own,” she says.

April Campbell, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, was one of just two Native American students in her small Washington school district. She grew up in the 1970s and 1980s when Oregon tribes that were recently terminated, meaning that their tribal governments were longer recognized by the federal government, were working to regain federal recognition. She was the first in her family to graduate high school and college. Now, Campbell is the Director of the Office of Indian Education at the Oregon Department of Education. She says that the lack of support and recognition she received in school is exactly why she is so passionate about SB-13.

Campbell says that a combination of factors led to the passing of SB-13 in 2017. When she started at the Oregon Department of Education in 2013, one of her first tasks was to help revise the Oregon American Indian/Alaska Native Education State Plan. The seventh objective on the plan, which was released in 2015, outlined the beginnings of the bill.

Oregon is only the third state to implement a senate bill that requires tribal education in public schools. In 1999, Montana passed the first bill of its kind to address this gap in curriculum on a state level. In 2015, Washington passed similar legislation.

Using the foundation from this state plan, Campbell, her Oregon Department of Education colleagues and tribal members began to lobby for a bill that could be modeled after those in Montana and Washington.

Once the bill was passed, the Oregon Department of Education invited representatives from each of the nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon to create a document called “The Essential Understandings of Native Americans in Oregon.”

Nicole Butler-Hooten, a second grade teacher at Irving Elementary school in Eugene, is an enrolled tribal member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the San Carlos Apache Tribe. The passing of Senate Bill 13 has allowed students to become more familiar with the Indigenous people who live in their communities. “My daughter is a fourth grader learning about the federally recognized tribes, and to see her feel empowered and to see her learn the strength and resiliency of our people is really why we do the work,” Butler-Hooten says.

Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 15

“I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT FOR KIDS TO SEE THEMSELVES IN THE CLASSROOM AND WHETHER THEY'RE NATIVE OR NOT."

Umatilla

Warm Springs Grand Ronde Siletz

coos, Lower Umpqua and siuslaw

Coquille

“It is a unique feat in itself to have nine nations working on a document,” Campbell says. “That process was beautiful.”

The representatives agreed on nine foundational concepts of tribal history and culture. They outlined tribal governance, languages, sovereignty and current presence in the state.

They also addressed Oregon’s genocide of its Indigenous people, federal policies and laws. In June of 2019, the Oregon Department of Education contracted the organization Education Northwest to create lesson plans with guidance from the tribes' Essential Understandings.

With the curriculum completed, the Oregon Department of Education began to plan to implement the curriculum in fourth, eighth and 10th grade classrooms in January of 2020. Despite school shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers like Jessica Wolpe found ways to adapt the curriculum to their virtual classrooms.

Wolpe, who is a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, immediately incorporated tribal history and culture in her classroom when she began teaching at Pleasant Hill Elementary School in 2013. She found some resources through her tribe’s education program but didn’t have access to the extensive tribal knowledge that’s now available to her with the lesson plans created as part of SB-13.

At the start of the year, she would lead a “cultural suitcase” activity with her students, where she encourages them to share aspects of their culture. Wolpe would show her students moccasins she made with her grandmother.

Wolpe was able to use resources and curriculum created by the Grand Ronde Education Committee for her social studies lessons. She brought her father in to speak about tribal sovereignty. One year, one of her students brought in her regalia to show the class. “I think it's important for kids to see themselves in the classroom and whether they're Native or not,” she says.

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Oregon cow creek

Burns paiute

Klamath

With the implementation of SB-13, teachers like Wolpe now have access to 45 lessons about tribes across Oregon. The Oregon Department of Education created an online professional development course for teachers that covers each Essential Understanding and ways to teach the curriculum. These modules are available for native and non-native teachers alike.

Wolpe says these modules have been helpful, especially when implementing the curriculum virtually.

Ten-year-old Emerie, one of Wolpe’s fourth grade students, admits that before she started learning about Oregon tribes in class, she imagined them wearing feather hats, leather garments and moccasins. “I thought they always looked like that, even nowadays,” she says.

Understanding that many of her students start with these assumptions, Wolpe encourages students to learn about what tribes are like today. “I try to emphasize to kids that Native Americans still live here today. I'm an Indian. I dress like this!”

Wolpe laughs, pointing to her casual white top.

This drive to highlight tribal resiliency through education is one of Brenda Lee Brainard’s long-standing goals. She was less than two months old when her tribe — the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians — was terminated.

She says she remembers reading books in school that described her tribe as “extinct.”

Brainard has been the director of the Eugene 4J Natives Program for almost 30 years. This after-school program offers tutoring services to Indigenous students and assistance with higher education planning. The program also hosts community events, summer camps and classes for the students to learn about different cultural practices.

From Brainard’s perspective, SB-13 is important because it helps non-tribal students understand that tribes still exist. “I don't ever say, ‘We were the aboriginal inhabitants.’ I say, ‘We are the inhabitants,’” Brainard says.

Brainard has spent 20 years creating curriculum on tribal history and culture for teachers in her district. She acknowledges the limitations of the current SB-13 curriculum and hopes that it will expand in scope. She wants to see more lessons on the history of Oregon termination and the tribal activism of the 1970s.

Still, Brainard thinks that SB-13 will help students understand Oregon history in a more accurate and authentic way. “It's not just the right thing to do anymore. It is the law,” she says.

Mackenzie Allison, a junior studying at Lane Community College, participated in the Natives Program for 13 years. Allison says that some of her best memories from childhood came from being a part of the program. She would attend drumming and dance classes after school, and she attended the program’s summer camp for 13 years.

Allison is unable to enroll as a tribal member, even though her great-grandmother was Cherokee and Choctaw. When her great-grandmother was adopted, she lost her original birth certificate, so the family couldn’t find her original name on the tribes’ scrolls.

The Natives Program was sometimes her only outlet to feel like she could embrace her history. She has three younger siblings and is happy that tribal history is now incorporated into their classes. “I'm mainly excited that they get to embrace their history without having to do it outside of school like I did,” Allison says.

The Oregon Department of Education is working on building assessments to accompany the curriculum in hopes of tracking the measurable impacts of SB-13. As schools begin to return to fully in-person classes after the coronavirus pandemic, teachers will be able to attend training sessions, have guest speakers and engage in more dynamic conversations with their students.

Angela Fasana, the Education Department Manager for the Grand Ronde Tribal government, says that SB-13 paves the way for more change.

She wants to see tribal history and culture incorporated into every part of the education system — in math, art and PE — not just through history, science and social studies. She hopes to see each district teach about the Indigenous population in its area, localizing the curriculum to better reflect the local population.

Fasana thinks that the passing of SB-13 will have a positive long-term impact on the relationship between the U.S. government and tribal nations. She hopes that students receiving the SB-13 curriculum now will be better equipped to collaborate with and advocate for Oregon tribes.

Nicole Butler-Hooten, a second grade teacher at Irving Elementary school in Eugene, takes the time each year to learn about the cultures and backgrounds of all the students in her class. “What I hope to do is to teach our students that culture is important,” Butler-Hooten says. “It's important to be respectful, and it's important to learn and know and grow.”

“I believe that seven generations from now, education will look different in Oregon because of the work we're doing right now. The acknowledgment of Indigenous people will look very different,” Fasana says. “I won't be here to see that. But I have faith.”

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Training to em The University of Oregon’s women's self-defense class teaches women confidence and strength through . its empowerment-based curriculum Written by Lauren Brown Photos by Amalia Birch

J

ess Thompson wove and pushed her way through the crowded dance floor at Taylor’s Bar & Grill. While the bar was packed with people drinking and dancing, Thompson was making her way outside to her friends.

But before she could escape the crowd to make it out the door, a man she’d never met before stopped her in her tracks.

He appeared to be a college student with a muscular build standing a couple of inches taller than her. He yelled something that Thompson describes as “dumb and flirty” over the music.

Just wanting to reunite with her friends, Thompson kept walking toward the door without a response.

The man reached out and grabbed her arm.

Thompson used her free hand to grab his arm, quickly twisting his wrist and swinging his arm behind his back.

The man released his grip on Thompson’s arm, and she also let go, backing away from him. He threw his hands up, yelling that he wasn’t going to do anything and disappeared into the crowd, leaving her alone.

Thompson learned the martial arts moves she used to defend herself against the man one year earlier while taking a class called Women’s Self-Defense her freshman year at the University of Oregon. Through her training, she learned how to enforce strong personal boundaries and refined her abilities to protect herself.

The University of Oregon’s Women’s Self-Defense class, PEMA 116, integrates a unique empowerment-based selfdefense model that not only teaches students how to protect themselves by practicing physical defense strategies, but is also designed to help women build confidence.

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Traditionally, self-defense programs are associated with physical training like martial arts and fighting moves, but the Women’s Self-Defense class also includes cognitive training that mentally prepares women for situations they may face. The class spends one-third of its time addressing the complexities that make self-defense for women distinct from a general selfdefense class for all genders.

The University of Oregon’s PE and Sociology program worked together to build the class’ curriculum. The two-credit course is split into two parts: a physical side taught by a martial arts instructor that students go to twice a week and an empowerment side that students go to once a week.

On the physical side of the class, Ryan Kelly, who has taught self-defense classes for over 25 years, shows students how to get out of certain positions, what places are most vulnerable for attack and how to get attackers away from them.

On the empowerment side, Jocelyn Hollander, a sociology professor with a specialization in gender, women’s self-defense training and violence against women, leads students through exercises on how to set boundaries, how to assert themselves and which verbal self-defense strategies should be used to de-escalate potentially dangerous situations. Kelly and Hollander began the class in 2014, and since then, two more instructors have joined the Women’s Self-Defense class to instruct on the empowerment side.

“I think the empowerment side is really important to get into your head because confidence is very important for efficiently executing the moves,” Thompson says. “But the physical aspect of it is empowerment in its own right.”

Hollander says that women generally face different kinds of physical and sexual assault than men: Men are more likely to be assaulted by strangers, while women are more likely to be assaulted by people that they know. The empowerment side

"Confidence is very important. for efficiently executing the moves "

mpower

Abby Sourwine (back) and Chloe Miller (front) practice breaking free of an attacker’s grasp or hold. Practicing these moves with classmates felt a little weird at first to Miller, but eventually she became more comfortable. “It was always very helpful and always an encouraging atmosphere,” Miller says. “You didn’t feel like someone was yelling, ‘Ah! You did that wrong.’”

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Former roommates Abby Sourwine (left) and Chloe Miller (right) practice some self-defense moves they learned in the Women’s Self-Defense class at the University of Oregon. The “ready stance,” where you put your arms out in front of you and put your feet up if someone pushes you to the ground, creates distance between you and an attacker. “It’s a barrier between you and whoever might be coming near you,” Miller says. “It’s a signal to someone that you know what you're doing.”

of the Women’s Self-Defense class addresses how this social dynamic might prevent women from defending themselves during an attack.

“The reality is that if the person who’s assaulting you is your friend, it’s really unlikely that you’re going to haul up and hit them in the nose or stick your fingers in their eyes or do any of those things,” Hollander says.

Hollander also notes how behavioral expectations associated with gender can make self-defense difficult for women. Women are conditioned to be lady-like, polite and quiet, which can prevent them from taking action or speaking up when they experience unwanted advances. By learning about selfsilencing and being aware of how it can prevent self-defense, students are less likely to self-silence, Hollander says.

Abby Sourwine, a University of Oregon student who took Women’s Self-Defense her freshman year, recalls a time before she took the class where she silenced herself in a potentially dangerous situation.

During her senior year of high school, Sourwine and her friend were walking back to her car in their local mall’s parking lot. The mall had just closed, and before the two arrived at their parking spot, they both heard fast-paced footsteps behind them.

When the two turned around, Sourwine says a man wearing all black, a hoodie and a black bandana covering his face was sprinting toward them. He promptly stopped in his tracks four feet away when the women turned around to face him.

All Sourwine could do was laugh and say, “Oh! You scared me!”

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The man silently stared at them. Sourwine, her friend and the man stood in silence for a few moments longer before Sourwine and her friend ran toward their car. The man took a couple of steps after them before stopping again. He did not pursue them to their car.

After having taken Women’s Self-Defense, Sourwine says she would’ve done things differently.

“I knew that I had acted in a strange way. I talked to him like he was a friend of mine, but I didn’t know him. I had no idea what his intentions were,” Sourwine says.

One of the first activities that Sourwine says her class did in the empowerment section of the class was practicing being loud. Sourwine says they learned how to project their voices and yelled, ‘What are you doing?’ and ‘Get away’ to let potential perpetrators know that they knew something was wrong.

Sourwine also says that, in the situation she described, she would’ve run back toward the mall where there were other people instead of toward her car, where it was less populated.

Through the Women’s Self-Defense class, students say they learn to live their lives without fear. Hollander says the empowerment side of the class not only makes students more aware of the societal barriers to self-defense, like self-silencing and the relationships women have with their attackers, but also guides students in reflecting on difficult topics in a setting without judgement.

Chloe Miller, a University of Oregon student who took Women’s Self-Defense I and II during her freshman year, says the class’ empowerment section helped create a space where women could talk about difficult topics.

"You learn not to be scared .”

When she was in high school, Miller says she went on a camping trip where she met a group of boys to play pick-up baseball with at the campsite. They biked deep into the forest to find a clearing for their game. Once the game was over, and the group dispersed for lunch, Miller found herself alone with one of the boys.

She couldn’t explain it at the time, but she says she felt uneasy and unsafe. Miller pushed the feeling to the back of her mind, dismissing it.

The boy started to close the space between them. He kept coming toward her until eventually, he had her cornered against a tree. Miller remembers freezing and wanting to curl up into a ball.

Having taken the class now, Miller says she would’ve tried to put as much space between her and him as possible.

“Just as simple as putting my hands up,” Miller says. “I did eventually make space, but it was after a while and I always wish I’d done it right away. As soon as I felt something was off.”

Miller shoved the boy away from her. He became angry and kept coming toward her. She tried to get away, and Miller picked up one of the plastic Wiffle Ball bats from the baseball game and began hitting him with it. Miller says that it was one of the scariest moments of her life.

Once she was able to get away, Miller felt terrible. Whether it was warranted or not, Miller says she felt awful for hitting him.

“It’s easy to go back and think, ‘I should’ve done this’ or ‘I should’ve done that,’ but you can’t blame yourself,” Miller says.

“Looking back on it, I’m glad I did something.”

During the first few days of the Women’s Self-Defense class, during both the physical and empowerment sides of the class, the students were introduced to difficult topics and discussed their experiences. Miller says the instructors made it clear right away that there would be no judgement and the class was a space to learn.

“We talked about a lot of heavy stuff, so it was hard to feel relaxed on the first day,” Miller says. “I definitely felt more at ease at the end of that class.”

Although the class teaches that women are less likely to need to use the material learned in the physical side of the self-defense class, Hollander and Kelly both emphasise how important it is to know how to physically defend yourself in cases where verbal self-defense doesn’t work. Kelly teaches that physical self-defense is meant to be a last resort for when attackers cross the verbal boundaries women place.

“Our students end up using verbal strategies, body language, boundary setting and de-escalation way more than they’re actually kneeing people in the groin,” Kelly says.

Miller says she recommends the Women’s Self-Defense class to “anybody who doesn't have the confidence to just walk down the street.”

“You learn confidence,” Miller says. “And you learn not to be scared.”

Abby Sourwine sits on top of Chloe Miller while Miller practices a move to get out from under an attacker if forced to the ground.

“Before the class, I would have no idea what to do in that situation,” Sourwine says. “And now I can turn it around and take back that power. It’s really cool.”

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SNIPPING OFF

S M R O N GENDER

Written by Chelsea Pitarresi Photos by Isabel Lemus Kristen

Anomaly Hair Collective is transforming the gendered world of hair studios and creating a safe space for Eugene’s queer community.

A

t Anomaly Hair Collective, rainbow paint splatters the art-covered walls, plants hang in the corners and music rings out through the speakers. Wearing a pink mask embroidered with the image of a Black woman holding a pride flag and roundhouse kicking Donald Trump, Mercedys Ruby fits right in with Anomaly’s colorful atmosphere.

Ruby got hired at the studio in July of 2020, just after their reopening from the initial pandemic shutdown in Oregon.

She says the studio has allowed her to follow both her creative and humanitarian passions, and that her work as a barber has given her meaningful connections to Eugene and the queer community.

Anomaly is creating a safe space for Eugene’s queer community within an industry historically reliant on gender norms. People who have gender non-conforming identities or hairstyles say that traditional hair salons and barbershops make them feel excluded, which is why places like Anomaly are important for creating more inclusive hair studios. While

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there are some non-gendered hair studios in other parts of the country like Los Angeles and Portland, they are rare compared to the volume of traditional shops, and Anomaly is the only independently owned queer barbershop in Eugene.

“My dream was to open an inclusive, queer hair studio that was more centered around the experience of walking into a place and feeling okay,” says Jordin McDowell, the owner of Anomaly, who identifies as queer. “Salons and barbershops are usually different things. I didn’t want any of that. I wanted to be focused on the individual, the hair they wanted and for them to feel safe.”

McDowell prefers the term “studio” for Anomaly since it functions as both a barbershop and a salon. Typically, the two are separate: barbershops for men and masculine cuts, salons for women and longer hairstyles. Combining them keeps labels and exclusivity out of the studio, in hopes that people with any gender identity or desired style will feel accepted at Anomaly, no matter how “unconventional” their look may be.

Megan Edmond has been working as a hairstylist at Anomaly Hair Collective since October 2020. “It's like my best life ever,” Edmond says. “I feel like we have such a tight little family and it’s only been

McDowell says he had a feeling Ruby would be perfect for Anomaly based on what he’d heard about her from his clients and from what he saw her post online. He left supportive comments on her social media posts about her struggles in beauty school, letting her know that he understood how difficult the environment could be.

Ruby was inspired to start beauty school after cutting her wife's hair for the first time, wanting to save money and avoid uncomfortable encounters in barbershops, which Ruby’s wife experienced in the past. The haircut went really well, but beauty school proved to be a bigger challenge than she expected.

As the only Black, queer woman barber in her class, Ruby felt isolated as she watched her peers relate to each other in ways she could not. By the end of her year in the barber program, she says it was hard to find the motivation to get through the 10-hour workdays with her classmates.

“Beauty school was horrific,” Ruby says. “I was the only woman barber in a sea of very toxic-masculinity alpha males.”

Classroom supplies were limited, and Ruby says she would always get stuck with the worst equipment, forced to pick last out of her peers. They would also take educational trips to local barbershops outside of class, but Ruby was never invited. She says since she didn’t grow up going to barbershops, which traditionally catered to men, she didn’t have access to the same connections as her classmates, and that those trips could have helped her gain knowledge about the local industry and barbers.

A friend saw Ruby struggling and introduced her to McDowell in hopes he could offer her the support she was missing. They arranged for Ruby to come shadow McDowell and see what a day looked like in an actual studio. The day went smoothly and the two kept in touch while Ruby finished beauty school. Just three days after she was officially licensed, McDowell hired her.

“The moment she walked in, I was like, ‘Yup, you are the sweetest, most ambitious person,’” McDowell says. “You know when you meet someone and they’re just so willing and eager to learn and grow?”

Hales Wilson, the coordinator for University of Oregon’s LGBT+ Education Support Services, says they can see how a hair studio like Anomaly can become a safe space for people in the queer community, and why the employees there can serve a unique, supportive role in the community. Wilson uses they/them pronouns.

“Getting your hair cut is really vulnerable,” Wilson says.

“Someone else is altering something very physical about yourself that’s tied to confidence, self-image and how you move through the world.”

Wilson helps students navigate identity crises and coming out while also providing educational and support resources for queer UO students and faculty. They’ve gotten their hair cut by McDowell before, and the two stay in touch.

Joining Anomaly Hair Collective has been a positive transition for Mercedys Ruby after what she describes as a horrific experience in beauty school. “Anomaly was a complete 180 from what I thought it was going to be,” Ruby says. “Everyone is so kind and welcoming and wants to help.”

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Mercedys Ruby, a barber at Anomaly Hair Collective, cuts her wife Bri Ruby's hair on a Sunday afternoon. Mercedys says her first introduction to hair styling occurred about a year ago after watching a 20-minute YouTube tutorial to trim Bri’s hair. She applied to beauty school soon after that. “I know Bri is going to be happy with just about anything,” Mercedys says. “So there’s no pressure, and I get to grow my creativity with her.”

Wilson says they have noticed that queer students with a sense of safety and security are more likely to experiment with their looks and gender expression, as those looks can function as a signal to others that they are members of the queer community. The actual experience of changing those looks can be just as impactful as the looks themselves, which is why Anomaly is focused on making the studio feel comfortable and accepting.

“It can feel quite scary to go against gender norms,” Wilson says. “But when folks have the support and space that they need to be able to explore their identity, there can be so much more expression and beauty that comes from it.”

Chianti Dixon, one of Ruby’s first clients at Anomaly and one of Ruby’s good friends, says she’s very thankful for the welcoming space Anomaly has built.

When Dixon first had her hair cut short, soon after coming out as lesbian, she says she could tell the stylists at the whitedominated, traditional barbershops she went to had never done a masculine cut on a woman, let alone on someone with tight curls. Curly hair looks a lot longer when wet, and Dixon says the hairdressers didn’t account for her unique curl pattern or shrinkage. Dixon says she “literally looked like a poodle” because the hair was cut way too short. What was supposed to be an exciting, freeing change left Dixon unsure of herself.

Because there are three women of color work at Anomaly and two of them are curl specialists, Dixon says she always leaves feeling confident.

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“They’re always playing good music and laughing.

It’s just more personable,” Dixon says. “I feel more like I’m hanging out with them, where other places I’ve gone have been really standoffish.”

Megan Edmond, a hairstylist at Anomaly, says she and the rest of her coworkers try to do little things to help their clients where they can. If a client mentions they haven’t eaten, she’ll search in the back for snacks. When one client vented about their niece being mistreated by the rest of the family for coming out as trans, Edmond asked one of her regulars, an LGBTQ+ focused therapist, for resources she could pass along to the niece. The studio also occasionally opens on holidays to provide food and a movie for queer people who may not have a family they can celebrate with.

Through Anomaly, Ruby says she gets to meet a wide spectrum of the community that she normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to work with. She was especially surprised by the number of little kids’ haircuts she gets to do and how many families come through Anomaly with multiple or all members identifying as part of the queer community. Seeing parents let their kids do what they want and not worry about gender labels or aesthetic norms makes Ruby really excited and proud of Eugene’s queer community.

“Nine out of 10 times, the people that come in are so excited to be there and a part of our little community,” Ruby says. “It’s a really incredibly supportive group. We love to take care of each other.”

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Margarita and Arturo High are the owners of Lonches To Go, a bright green foodtruck off of River River Road in Eugene. "March and April were absolutely dead," Margarita High says. "All of our regulars had all lost their jobs.

Latinx, Without Help Oregon’s Latinx businesses faced financial, linguistic and cultural barriers that made it more difficult for them to receive pandemic relief money than for white businesses.

Written by Mariah Botkin Photos by Elle Wayt

I

n August, Guadalupe Valentin opened Poco Loco, a small Mexican food truck right off of Highway 99 in Eugene, with his daughter and nephew after they lost their jobs as cooks due to the coronavirus pandemic. By the time Valentin had opened the business, he didn’t think any funding would be left from the first round of Paycheck Protection Program loans that came out last March.

“We didn’t think we would get a loan, so we didn’t apply at all,” Valentin says.

Valentin says no one told him much about the loan application process. What he did know was that in order to qualify for loan forgiveness, he would have to spend 60 percent of the loan on payroll. But because he only employs his daughter and nephew, spending the majority of a loan on his two employees would be difficult.

Other forms of government assistance also didn’t offer much help. “Lane County offered some masks and gloves and cleaning products, but other than that, there hasn’t been support. We still pay taxes though,” Valentin says, laughing.

As a new business opening up in the middle of a pandemic without money to advertise, Poco Loco has struggled to stay afloat. “Right now, we are basically just surviving. We are having a really tough time,” Valentin says. “We don’t have any help at all.”

But Valentin isn’t the only one. Latinx people own close to 23,000 businesses in Oregon, making up about 3 percent of the state’s businesses, and according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 32 percent of Latinx-owned businesses and 17 percent of white-owned businesses across the country became inactive between February and April 2020. While most business owners have faced several hurdles due to the coronavirus pandemic, Latinx business owners in Oregon have faced extra challenges due to the inaccessibility of PPP loans to Latinx people.

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Undocumented business owners are barred altogether from applying for these loans. When Latinx businesses do receive loans, the loans are often small, and it can be hard for them to meet loan forgiveness requirements, according to multiple studies.

Even if Valentin wanted to apply for a PPP loan, the federal government requires that any self-owned business needs to have started operating before Feb. 15, 2020 to be eligible for a loan, so Valentin was ineligible for the PPP program for multiple reasons.

At the beginning of March 2020, the U.S. government required 75 percent of loan funds to be spent on payroll to qualify for loan forgiveness. In late May, this figure was lowered to 60 percent.

It can be difficult for Latinx businesses to reach loan forgiveness requirements because many, like Poco Loco, are family-owned and have very few employees. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, 91 percent of Latin-American businesses in the U.S. are owned by the people who work there and don't have any other employees.

When PPP loan applications opened in March of last year, many Latinx business owners had issues applying because most banks were only accepting English applications. And for some small business relief funds available through the state of Oregon, loan applications weren’t immediately available in Spanish.

By April 2020, nearly 50 percent of Hispanic businesses in the U.S. were financially distressed or financially at risk compared to 27 percent of white-owned businesses, according to another report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Even if Valentin started his business before Feb. 15 and was eligible to apply, he may have received little to no funding. An article from Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative showed that U.S. Latinx-owned businesses had their PPP loans approved at half the rate of white-owned businesses, and only 3 percent

Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 27

of Latinx businesses got their full funding request compared to 7 percent of white-owned businesses.

Margarita High, the owner of Lonches To Go, a bright green food truck off of River Road in Eugene, received a small loan from PPP. High and her husband, Arturo High, are the only two workers of the truck, and as a result, they were allotted on.$1,400.

“When you are self-employed, you don’t get a good loan because you don’t have payroll,” High says. “It was good to get $1,400, but the only thing I was able to pay was my business’ rent and electric bill, and the expenses keep coming every month.”

High’s loan will not be eligible for loan forgiveness because it was spent on her rent and electricity. High, however, is.hopeful.

On Feb. 24, 2021, the U.S. Small Business Administration opened a new PPP loan application for sole proprietors and self-employed individuals. Because this loan focuses on the gross income that businesses make per year, generally a larger number than the income they make per month, High feels she may receive a larger loan than before. This would mean more stability for her business.

When it comes to applying for PPP funding, language barriers also stand in the way for much of the Latinx community.

While filling out her first PPP loan application, Evy Hernandez, the owner of La Granada Latin Kitchen in Springfield, thought she knew what was coming. But after finding out that her bank was not offering it, then facing reluctance from other banks to help her and finally having to find a third-party lender, all the emergency funding had been depleted.

So when the next round of funding came out, she tried hard to get it but quickly realized that even though she’s fluent in English, she still couldn’t understand the business jargon in the applications. She says that for non-native English speakers, it’s nearly impossible. She was only able to understand the forms by getting help from some contacts she had at the Springfield Chamber of Commerce.

“That saved us. If it hadn’t been for that, I don’t know what would’ve happened because it was very tough,” Hernandez says.

Alexandra Perez Urbina, the Cambios Program Director for Huerto de la Familia, an organization that works to increase the economic security of Latinx families by providing training in agriculture and business creation, has worked extensively with Hernandez and other Latinx business owners. As a result, Urbina has observed the inaccessibility of emergency relief grants.

“Evy is fully bilingual. She understands English. She has a pretty high degree of education, and she had a hard time understanding the language on these documents,” Urbina says.

She says that many of the Latinx entrepreneurs Huerto de la Familia works with come from disadvantaged backgrounds, where the average level of education tends to be between the fifth and eighth grade level.

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Evy and Baldo Hernandez, owners of La Granada, a small Latin restaurant in the PublicHouse in downtown Springfield, kept their restaurant doors open all year during the pandemic. “We love it here, we did not want to close our doors if we did not have to,” Evy Hernandez says. “It is nice to see everyone coming back in and enjoying our food again."

“Evy is fully bilingual. . . She has a pretty high degree of education, and she had a hard time understanding the language on these documents.”

Another barrier to pandemic relief money in the Latinx community is banking. According to The Center For Responsible Lending, 46 percent of white-owned businesses accessed credit from a bank before the pandemic. For Latinx businesses, this figure was only 32 percent. These disparities meant that when PPP rolled out, the Latinx community was at a disadvantage.

Urbina says that the lack of a relationship between Latinxowned businesses and banks is due to mistrust. “Historically, they have taken advantage of these groups, so there is a lot of reluctance,” Urbina says.

In April, The Center For Responsible Lending predicted this problem, stating that 91 percent of Latinx-owned businesses “stand close to no chance of receiving a PPP loan through a mainstream bank or credit union.”

When Hernandez finally received help through the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, she says an established relationship with the third-party lender is what made it possible for her to apply.

In addition, when Latinx people try to access these resources, they often don’t have the required documentation needed for assistance or they don’t learn about such funds until it’s too late to apply. Urbina notes that this “first come, first serve” loan model has been incredibly detrimental to minorityowned businesses.

Maria Garcia, the owner of Revolución Coffee House in Portland, has seen the businesses of her co-nationals go down the drain due to them not knowing how to access such funding. She says one woman she knows was forced to sell her business and is now in thousands of dollars of debt and facing deportation.

Other cultural barriers continue to stand in the way of Latinx businesses accessing emergency funding. “There is a lot of misunderstanding, pride and fear with accessing any of these government resources,” Urbina says.

One primary source of fear and misunderstanding is public charge laws. These laws state that if a person wants to apply for citizenship and they have received any public assistance, they are more likely to have their application denied. During the Trump administration, these laws were greatly amped-up, which Urbina says has played a large role in the community’s hesitancy to apply for assistance. “I have tried really hard to explain that these funds aren’t public charge because they are emergency relief,” Urbina says.

On Feb. 2, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that initiated the revocation of the public charge rule with the goal of improving immigration processes for those living in the U.S. PPP loan problems are not the only issues Latinx business owners are facing. When the pandemic hit, things quickly moved online. According to an Upserve survey, 47 percent of restaurants said their transition to online ordering has been their biggest challenge during the COVID-19 crisis. Because of technical barriers, this rapid transition online has been a particular challenge for the Latinx business community.

Internet use in Hispanic communities in 2019 was 75 percent compared to 82 percent for Caucasians according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Jovani Ojeda, whose parents own the taco truck Dos Banderas in downtown Eugene, says transitioning to a more digital business model was something his family didn’t even think about. While their business has a Facebook page where they post occasional updates, they haven’t looked into new ways to push their business online. The move to more digital business formats highlights a technical barrier within the Latinx/Hispanic community, a barrier that’s known as the racial-digital divide.

Urbina has directly observed how minority businesses are not as entrenched online as white businesses, saying that, “Oregon likes to do things online, and things are moving online, but people get left behind.”

As part of the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill President Joe Biden signed into law on March 11, restaurants will be able to apply for grants (not loans, like those available under PPP) to offset losses in 2020. It’s the first federal pandemic relief aid that’s specifically meant for restaurants and includes money even for restaurants that opened in 2020. The initial fund has $28.6 billion for restaurants, and more money could be approved once those funds run out.

While applications aren't open yet, based on information from the Independent Restaurant Coalition (which helped craft the bill), Poco Loco, Lonches To Go and La Granada should all be eligible for relief money. This could change everything for these businesses.

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Swimming Upstream As wild salmon populations buckle from habitat loss, hydropower and climate change, members of Indigenous communities fight to preserve their fishing traditions.

Written by Clayton Franke Illustrations by Samantha Shevey

I

n 2015, Gabe Sheoships walked the banks of the Umatilla River in northeastern Oregon. Holding a gaff, a long pole ending in a hook for spearing fish, he approached a large pool holding a group of Chinook salmon.

“Never in my life have I seen that many salmon return,” Sheoships says.

But his gaff wasn’t working properly. So he pulled out his pocket knife and dove to the bottom of the pool, stabbing a salmon. The fish would provide a meal, just as it had for the people who lived off the river for thousands of years. He hopes to pass the tradition on to his sons — but he’s going to have to fight for it.

Despite the large run of salmon and steelhead in 2015, the number of fish returning to the Columbia River and its tributaries each season represents a fraction of historical salmon runs.

As Oregon’s once plentiful wild salmon populations succumb to habitat loss, hydropower, hatchery fish and climate change, Indigenous tribes struggle to preserve their traditional way of life and relationship to this symbolic fish.

It’s unclear exactly how abundant wild salmon were before the white development of western Oregon in the mid19th century. According to Jeremy FiveCrows, a public affairs specialist for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, an estimated 17 million salmon once filled the Columbia River Basin.

As of 2014, under two million remain. These massive spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead runs sustained Indigenous populations in the Columbia Basin, including on the Willamette River. Not only were the salmon large and packed with protein, but the runs were predictable. Born in freshwater, they would journey to the ocean and return to the rivers to spawn, or breed, at certain times each year.

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According to the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, these traditional food sources are a staple of Indigenous cultural identity in the Pacific Northwest. The salmon runs are celebrated as a renewal of life each year and allows the transfer of traditional values from generation to generation. The commission says that without salmon returning to the rivers they “would cease to be Indian people.”

“It’s a whole culture that’s based on a place and these sacred foods that are all of a sudden going away, declining or moving into other ranges,” FiveCrows says. “That is a huge problem for a culture that’s based on those foods.”

Sheoships, a Cayuse/Walla Walla tribal citizen, works as a fisheries biologist and Indigenous educator at Portland State University and as the executive director of Friends of Tryon Creek, a non-profit organization focusing on education about the natural world. He teaches about “first foods,” the foods Indigenous people traditionally hunted and harvested in the region: berries, roots, deer, elk and salmon.

“Salmon is essential to both sustenance and lifestyle, fishing, harvesting, gathering and also to survival,” Sheoships says. “Salmon were and are an important piece of culture in the Pacific Northwest.”

Sheoships says there’s still a group of tribal citizens who live year-round on the Columbia River in fishing camps. They depend on salmon and steelhead for their diets, trade and local economies.

According to Jeremy Romer, assistant biologist for the South Willamette Watershed District, salmon are also an essential part of the ecosystem. After their ocean runs, salmon are much larger because the ocean environment provides more

Gabe Sheoships fishes for smelt in February of 2019, using a dip net with his son, Maynard Kane, on the Cowlitz River, a tributary of the Columbia River. “On the Umatilla, they haven’t had a season in a few years because there hasn’t been enough fish, so you lose the ability to teach younger folks how to do that,” Sheoships says. “Not only are you losing your ability to fish and to harvest fish, you can’t teach people how to do it.” (Photo submitted by Gabe Sheoships)

nutrients than a river does. The returning salmon spawn and die, and nutrients from their carcasses can be traced in trees and soil 100 yards away from the river.

The fish is critical to cultural and natural well-being in the Pacific Northwest. So what led to its decline?

The middle of the 20th century saw a rapid development of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, including agriculture and sawmills that disrupted fish habitat. But the construction of dams truly changed the nature of these rivers. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built dozens of dams in the Columbia Basin, including 13 in the Willamette Basin. The dams hindered migratory fish in their spawning runs, decreasing survival rates, while reservoirs flooded natural spawning habitat.

According to Jeffrey Ziller, a fisheries biologist for the South Willamette Watershed District, the construction of dams was the most significant factor in declining salmon populations.

“Every assessment that has been done since I’ve been around has fingered the dams as the major limiting factor to salmon in the Willamette system,” Ziller says. “There’s obviously good reasons for that. Until we can fix the downstream passage issues at those dams, it will be extremely difficult to recover spring Chinook salmon in the Willamette Basin.”

According to the historical journal “Pacific Historical Review,” economic prospects motivated these dam projects. The dams provided flood control while improving shipping routes and agriculture. However, these developments weren’t to the benefit of the Indigenous people who lived on the watersheds in question. With no choice in the fate of the salmon, the tribes watched the demise of their cherished fish.

“There was an economic growth that changed society, but tribes were very much left behind in that,” Sheoships says.

“Many tribes have treaties, but treaties are kind of worthless if there’s no fish to have access to.”

In response to the completion of the dams, the Yakama, Nez Perce, Warm Springs and Umatilla tribes formed the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission to “ensure the restoration of tribal fisheries.” They had recently defended treaties ensuring their right to harvest salmon, but now they needed to defend the salmon themselves.

“During the ‘70s, there was a real possibility there would be whole segments of the salmon population that would go extinct,” says FiveCrows, who grew up on the Nez Perce reservation. “So the tribes said, ‘If there’s no fish, it’s the same as not having a treaty right to fish.’”

Through their restoration plan, Spirit of the Salmon, the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission contributed to the halt in salmon decline and numbers rose from near-extinction levels. At the same time, fish hatcheries became the easiest way Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 31

Where are the salmon going?

Captain James Cook arrived on the Columbia River in 1779 and established the beaver trade in the region, according to the Native Fish Society. Beaver trapping continued into the 19th century, producing the first significant alteration of salmon habitat on the Columbia and Willamette rivers. In the 19th century, the first sawmills were built close to the Willamette, and a spike in irrigation drew water from the river to water crops. Salmon still face these obstacles today as the human population along the Columbia and Willamette rivers continues to grow. But perhaps the most significant change to the water resources in the Columbia River Basin was the construction of dams.

The effort to dam the waterways of the Willamette Valley were motivated by the prospect of economic development. According to William Robbins’ “Pacific Historical Review,” a 1935 preliminary report on the Willamette Valley Project from an Oregon State Planning Board suggested building dams on the Willamette for “the benefit of all its inhabitants.” After the Great Depression, developers were looking for ways to kickstart the economy. Reservoirs would improve irrigation for farming, prevent flooding and make river levels more manageable for shipping.

In 1933, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the first dam on the Columbia River, followed by two more in the 1950s. By 1969, the Willamette Valley Project was finished, which included the construction of 13 dams in the Willamette Valley. Many of these dams stand over 300 feet tall and provide “flood risk management, power generation, water quality improvement, fish and wildlife habitat and recreation,” according to the U.S Army Corps of Engineers Portland website. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, the dam system has prevented $25 billion in flood damages since its inception.

But this project proved detrimental to wild salmon populations. High head dams are man-made barriers to salmon runs and destroy critical spawning habitats. Rocks, wood debris, twists and turns in the river create deep pools or flowing water where the fish can build their nests. Flooding these areas with reservoirs makes them unsuitable for salmon. When juvenile salmon run to the ocean, downstream dams disrupt the journey.

The developers also had political power. Early momentum for the project benefited from the influence of Oregon senator Charles McNary and governor Charles Martin, while H.R. Kipp, Secretary of the Portland Chamber of Commerce, served on the project’s committee.

In 1937, the Army Engineers held a public hearing in Salem to discuss the project. In attendance were state senators, members of the city council, chairmen of local farming organizations and leaders of local business and commercial organizations. Naturalist William Finley was the only one at the hearing to voice any opposition to the projects. No tribal nations were represented.

to return fish to the river. Today, some fisheries in the Columbia Basin are completely reliant on hatcheries.

and hatchery manager Erik Whithalm had a decision to make: Release all the fish at once or let them die.

Following the completion of the dams, an agreement was made between the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Army Corps of Engineers to mitigate the harm to fish populations caused by the dams. Today, the Army Corps of Engineers pays the department to operate seven hatcheries in the area, including the Leaburg Hatchery on the McKenzie River.

“There was no time to get trucks and pumps to try to load them out,” Whithalm says. “It was either let them die or release them out, and obviously releasing them out was the right thing to do.”

The massive release of fish raises questions about the impact this might have on the wild fish populations in the McKenzie and Willamette rivers. According to Whithalm, about a million total fish were released unexpectedly, a mix of spring Chinook salmon, summer steelhead and rainbow trout. The September release was six months ahead of the normal release time for these fish, and what this means for the ecosystem is still unclear.

These hatchery-reared salmon provide recreational fishing for the angling public on the McKenzie but aren’t an active tool in conserving wild populations. Romer says steelhead and salmon reared in a hatchery sometimes carry genetic losses from one generation to the next. For example, a hatchery salmon has no use for a jumping gene, causing it to fade, resulting in fish that can’t jump when they need to.

As the Holiday Farm Fire ripped through the McKenzie River Corridor in the fall of 2020, the Eugene Water and Electric Board opened Leaburg Dam in order to prevent logjams, leaving the hatchery with diminished water. On Sept. 8, Romer, Ziller 32 | ETHOS | Spring 2021

“The hatchery system is very much in the US agricultural model, which is, ‘We’ll grow the biggest and best fish and set it loose and hopefully it comes back,’” Sheoships says.

In his educational work, Sheoships has taught Indigenous science, which focuses on science in a holistic and relational

Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission technicians tag and sample a fall Chinook salmon at the adult fish facility at Bonneville Dam Adult Fish Facility on the Columbia River. The crews collect length and sex data from a proportion of passing adult salmon as well as scale and tissue samples for aging and genetic stock identification. (Photo submitted by Zachary Penney, Fishery Science Department Manager for CRITFC)

sense. He says Western science sometimes only focuses on solving the problem and moving on without considering longterm effects on the environment.

“In more circular Indigenous knowledge, there’s really no end,” Sheoships says. “Everything is a cycle where things come back around to one another. We’re thinking long term about what’s going to happen to our descendants and our future generations and what the salmon will look like for them.”

The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commissions is using hatcheries as acclimation facilities rather than for recreational purposes. Since only a small percentage of wild salmon eggs reach adulthood, the commission’s hatcheries protect eggs to ensure higher survival. But before the fish reach the smolt stage — the part of the life cycle where the fish “imprint” on the location they will return to after an ocean voyage — they are moved into a safe habitat in the river. FiveCrows says acclimation facilities give the fish a better chance to survive but ultimately keeps the genes wild.

The justification for recreational hatchery programs parallels the motive for the dam project: the economy. Currently, wild salmon numbers are too low in the Willamette Basin to sustain any kind of consistent angling or harvesting, creating the need for hatcheries. According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, hatchery fish account for 70 percent of the fish harvested in the state, and for every dollar invested into the hatchery program, $17 is invested into the state’s economy.

Whithalm says tourists visit the McKenzie River specifically for the hatchery, bringing business to local towns and the McKenzie River sport fishing industry.

“If we want to have a harvest salmon fishery in the Upper Willamette system, we have to provide salmon from the hatchery system,” Ziller says. “That’s where we’re at right now. If we could trade that tomorrow for wild salmon, we’d do it.”

The future of salmon conservation in the Columbia Basin is uncertain. As the planet warms, salmon face yet another existential crisis. Warmer water temperatures are unsuitable for Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 33

Source: fisheries.noaa.gov

salmon. When snow melts too early in the high mountains, the water level in the rivers drops dangerously low in late summer and fall. In the hatcheries, warmer temperatures and poor habitat can result in new diseases and the invasion of parasites.

This issue isn’t unique to the Pacific Northwest. The World Wildlife Fund released a report on Feb. 23 detailing the decline of the world’s migratory freshwater fish populations by 76 percent since 1970. Today, one-third of freshwater fish are facing extinction. In 2020 alone, 16 different freshwater species were declared “extinct” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.

For Sheoships, effective conservation also requires a change in the public consciousness.

“There’s this idea we live in a place with vast resources ready for the taking, and that goes into the world we live in now,” Sheoships says. “I think we’re at an ecological tipping point where we’re seeing the effects of the last 200 years or so.”

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Still, Sheoships is optimistic about the future. Jaime Pinkham, a Nez Perce tribe member and executive director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, was recently appointed to President Joe Biden’s administration to oversee civil works for the Army Corps of Engineers. Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo, was sworn in as Joe Biden's Secretary of the Interior on March 18, 2021. She's the first Indigenous person to hold the position responsible for the management of federal land and natural resources, and the first Indigenous cabinet secretary of any kind in U.S. history.

The salmon will probably never return to their original numbers. Their future is precarious with their fate in the hands of politics. The fight to save the salmon of the Columbia Basin is one to preserve not only a species, but a culture.

“Indigenous people have always been adapting and are pretty resilient,” Sheoships says. “I think society needs to follow suit and adapt.”

CONTENT ADVISORY: Sexual Violence. Read before continuing.

TAKING BACK OUR STORIES UO students share stories of sexual violence, resilience and recovery.

Illustrations by Makena Hervey Take Back The Night is a global event that inspires survivors and allies to march, protest and share their experiences around sexual violence. It’s a night of empowerment, support and radical protest for many survivors.

Due to the pandemic, Take Back the Night can’t happen in its normal capacity, but that doesn’t mean we stop sharing our stories. I wanted to share my story in our magazine hoping it would help others and create an opportunity for other survivors to do so as well. Ethos has partnered with several UO students and alumna who are survivors of sexual violence to create a platform for us to share our experiences.

The following stories describe sexual assault, rape and domestic violence and are at times graphic in detail. Our goal is not to trigger others by sharing these stories, but to normalize conversations around sexual violence, amplify survivor voices and create a space where others can recognize their own experiences in ours and know they’re not alone.

We refer to survivors by their first names so that no harm comes to them as a result of this publication.

As long as survivors share their experiences and refuse to be silent, we are fighting against sexual violence and taking back what is ours. And that is why we are sharing our stories with you today. Thank you to all the brave survivors who submitted pieces for this project and trusted our publication in this process.

—Jozie Donaghey, Ethos Photo Editor

If you would like to share your story of sexual violence and be a part of the online version of this project, please email photo@ ethosmagonline.com. Submissions will be accepted from the UO community through April for Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 35

JOZIE'S STORY "LIKE MANY SURVIVORS, I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT MY ABUSER HAD DONE WAS RAPE BECAUSE IT WASN’T THE RAPE I WAS USED TO HEARING ABOUT. "

The towering, three-story atrium began to warm as it filled with protesters finding seats in front of the makeshift stage.

I shivered. Maybe it was from the sweat after marching from campus to downtown, but it felt like anxiety. I sat in my chair as a spectator, waiting for the open mic to start, unaware my life was about to change forever.

I was a sophomore in college and had just been inducted into the University of Oregon’s journalism program. Hungry to build my portfolio as a budding photojournalist, I was going to events around campus to take photos. That was how I found myself at my first Take Back the Night, an international event to protest sexual violence and support survivors, in 2018.

As the event started, we marched through campus to downtown, twisting and turning through streets to make the route longer. I was sweating in my black, wool turtleneck as I sprinted in front of the pack, snapped some shots of the protesters and took off again to catch up as they passed me.

The sky turned pink as daylight faded. I put my camera away and joined the marchers as we reached our final destination: The Atrium building in downtown Eugene. I stood in line to get refreshments before finding a seat with a plate of strawberries.

Survivors took the mic one by one and told stories that sounded like nightmares. It was hard for them to speak. Their voices shook, and tears streamed down their cheeks. Each survivor had a different story, but the anger and pain in their words were the same.

As the line of survivors near the stage shrunk, a young woman grabbed the mic and took a deep breath. She told us her ex-roommate had vaginally raped her with his fingers while they were watching a movie a few years ago.

As she described what happened to her, my heart began to race, my eyes welling with tears and my throat starting to close.

I wanted to curl into a ball and run away and disappear all at the same time. I had to fight my body’s desire to puke as the room began to spin.

It was sitting there listening to a survivor tell her story, in a room full of strangers, at my very first Take Back the Night event that I learned I’d been raped when I was 14 years old by an exboyfriend. That’s because her story and mine are almost identical.

My abuser and I dated for a few months during my eighth grade year. He was a sophomore in high school.

It was a typical early spring evening in Eugene, Oregon: cold, dark and raining. We were on a group date at Putters, a family entertainment center, and had just ordered pizza after a game of mini golf. While we were sitting at a large table near several birthday parties filled with superhero balloons and princess tutus, my abuser stuck his hands down my pants, then my underwear.

No one else could see what was happening under the table and I jumped with pain as his fingers penetrated me.

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I’d never been penetrated, not even with tampons, and when he pushed himself inside me, it hurt. I told him to stop. I said it hurt. I said I wasn’t ready for that.

He laughed and continued.

Even though I was surrounded by people, I felt isolated. I had no idea what to do. I was afraid if I said something, I would get in trouble or my parents would get called. I was afraid I’d done something wrong because I didn’t think boyfriends could rape their girlfriends. I thought it was my fault for not enjoying it.

Like many survivors, I didn’t know what my abuser had done was rape because it wasn’t the rape I was used to hearing about.

In my mind, rape was something that happened in dark alleys or frat bedrooms like you see in movies or on the news, not in a crowded restaurant with witnesses. I thought it was done with a penis, not fingers or hands.

Years later, I saw his manipulation for the abuse it was: he used his age and professed love to pressure me into things I didn’t want to do. But it took hearing another survivor tell the same story as mine to realize the extent of his abuse.

Finding out you were raped years after the fact is an unimaginable pain. I felt like an idiot. How could I have not known I was raped? How was I just now arriving at this conclusion?

In reality, it was impossible for me to realize I’d been raped because my brain suppressed the traumatic memory entirely.

This is a common experience with trauma, where the brain blocks

painful memories as a protective mechanism to get through the day, only re-imagining them when the body perceives it’s in danger or in a similar situation. But suppressing the memory didn’t suppress the pain, flashbacks, trust issues or nightmares. It just prevented me from healing.

My healing began by sitting in that auditorium at Take Back the Night, and it was life-changing.

I started recognizing behaviors I’d thought were normal as signs of PTSD: showering with barricaded doors and no curtain so I could see fictional intruders, waking up from nightmares every night, pushing loved ones away so they couldn’t betray me, avoiding being alone with male family and friends. Soon, I started trauma therapy, learned how to manage my PTSD and felt in control for the first time in six years.

A year later, I went back to Take Back the Night, this time as a survivor. I marched in the middle of the group and experienced an overwhelming feeling of power and safety, like wearing a protective shield of armor made of brave survivors yelling “fuck sexual assault.” It was liberating. I let their strength wash over me as I stepped through the Atrium doors and signed up to speak.

My name was called. I walked up to the stage, grabbed the mic and took back what was mine. I took back my voice. I took back my story. I took back my power and autonomy and control when I said out loud, for the very first time, “My name is Jozie Donaghey, and I was raped.”

JASMINE'S STORY Written by Jozie Dongahey

MINA'S STORY At age 17, “please stop” was a common utterance. It would leave my mouth as a whisper, floating through pursed lips only to land on deaf ears. Rendezvous frequently turned sour until they were nothing more than a cacophony of noes, thrusts and slaps.

Eventually, these strong noes turned into subtle, sickly yesses, or rather, the absence of a no, as I let him take control of my body, too exhausted to try anymore.

One night, melancholy crept over me. Turned off by the thought of sex, I said a firm no. This led to pleading, begging and forced touching. I said no again. I continued to say no, but he got on top of me, and mounting me as an animal would, my body froze in defeat.

He finished. I turned over. Dissociation wore off. Immediately, tears flooded my eyes like hot acid. I told him I needed to shower.

I told myself I needed to wash my tainted body. But even as water rushed over me, both from eyes and the spout above, I felt ruined.

When he hugged me after I stepped out of the shower, it felt like I was being thrown back into a tempestuous sea to drown. I tried to avoid him for the next few days, and when he later asked me if he had raped me, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know. It couldn’t be rape. It was just a miscommunication.

A miscommunication I could not stop thinking about for the next week, month, year.

In my first year of college, I attended a talk by Sohalia Abdulali, a survivor who was discussing her book What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape. After her poignant lecture, I stood up and asked, “How do you know if you’ve been raped?” I don’t remember her answer, but I do remember someone from the UO’s Sexual Violence Support Services coming up to me and handing me their phone number.

I never called the number, and I continue to invalidate my own experiences. I tell myself I didn’t try hard enough to stop it, that if he knew he hurt me, I would potentially hurt him, and then I would feel guilty, that because it happened in a relationship, it was not rape. Rape, such a big word. A word that discourages me from saying, “I too am a survivor.” But abuse isn’t a one-size-fits-all T-shirt. It is your own experience. It was my own experience. I was hurt, I am hurting, but I am valid, and it was never my fault.

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When Jasmine met her abuser during her sophomore year of high school, she thought she’d struck gold. He was nice, smart and artistic, and she felt pride in being mature enough to date a senior.

It started as casual hook-ups, but when they started hanging out frequently things got more serious and more sexual, and consent started turning into coercion.

“He would always act like he was teaching me stuff about sex and about the world because he was older,” Jasmine says. “He definitely used that to get me to do things.”

Then he became violent. Sex became painful and he would beat and choke her. One time his mom walked in on him grabbing Jasmine by the throat, and she told Jasmine never to come over when she wasn’t home, saying it wasn’t safe.

One afternoon her abuser asked her to come over. When she got there, his mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Anxiety set in as she walked toward the front door, but she was falling in love with him and didn’t think anything serious would happen.

Her abuser offered her marijuana first. Then later, some Xanax. She started to feel tired, and that’s when he brought up anal sex. Jasmine said she wasn’t ready and that she didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t listen. Ignoring her repeated attempts to stop him and say no, he forced her into the position he wanted and raped her.

“I just froze. I couldn’t believe he was doing this to me and my body just went limp,” she says. “He just moved my body, placing my arm here and my legs there and wherever he wanted me.”

Afterward, she felt ashamed and blamed herself for the rape.

But when two of her friends reached out to her saying her abuser had also assaulted them, and they wanted to take legal action, Jasmine was onboard. She told her family about the rape, thinking she would be heading to court soon. They didn’t believe her. She and her friends went to the police to report. They didn’t believe them either.

Despite having three victims, text messages of the abuser admitting to the rapes, documented evidence from each of the girls showing bruises and other physical abuse along with threatening texts from the abuser, the case never got anywhere.

Not even to a courtroom.

“We kept calling the police station to check on the investigation, and they just kept telling us, ‘it’s still in progress’ and then would never call us back,” Jasmine says. “We had so much evidence, and nothing happened.”

ANDI'S STORY — DUST Body flat on my bed, I stare up at my bedroom ceiling— bone white and chipped in one place— and watch dust dangle like tiny ghosts in the static afternoon air, shifting about in a slow stir, headed nowhere.

It should be quiet here— the drone of the box fan in the corner, the occasional inhalation when I remember to breathe— but it hardly ever is.

There is too much time to think.

Then, at nightfall, dust looming overhead, I am a cadaver on an exam table, autopsied by the men in my imagination who have returned to see me dead, frozen in a bed.

One by one, they take what they want from me, dissecting my corpse limb to limb, turning me, now turned out, into hollowed-out skin, just as before.

I choke on air, and my heart hammers ahead against my chest as if attempting escape. Here, I become who I have been for years now— a bug-eyed, gasping thing, trapped by its own memory.

Soon enough though, my heart falls back into its usual numbed pace— soon enough, I am no longer swallowing air like I am starved of it, at least for a night or two.

It is too dark to see the dust, but I know it is there, still looming, coating the room, little by little, in a film of gray.

KAY'S STORY I had never been in love before I knew my abuser.

I was 16, and he was 19, and I had no clue what it meant to be cherished and what it meant to be used. I was 16, and he was 19, and I will never forgive the loss of my youth in the years I was with him. I simply didn’t know anything about being intimately attached to someone else.

The abuse started off small, like hugs that lasted longer than I wanted after I tried to pull away or forcefully moving my hips against his when I didn’t know what was happening. Things I could easily write off with “boys will be boys,” and, “all men are like this in relationships.”

The abuse grew until eventually it became days, months, years where he would regularly hold me down by my thighs while I desperately tried to move away from his hands without hurting myself further. He was forceful and would take anything from me, emotionally or sexually. Everything was always on his terms; my decisions, like what movie to watch or what I would wear, were just passing annoyances to him that he batted away like flies.

When I would make myself heard, when I disagreed with him or wanted my autonomy back was when he used guilt and his religion to push me back down. He would send me a long string of videos of him sobbing, begging me to just “act like a good Christian woman should” and follow his lead, wherever that took me. “If you would just listen to me,” he pushed endlessly. But, “just listen to me” truly meant, “stop struggling so much,” so he wouldn’t have to shove me down into the back of his pickup so hard while he raped me. That way he wouldn’t leave bruises on my thighs to mark what he’d done.

This went on for two years of my life, and I thought that was how love worked. “That’s how men and women were meant to be in relationships together,” the people from church told me.

But that’s not what love is meant to be. Touch doesn’t equal pain, and love is supposed to make you happy, not numb. I will never stop raging for the younger version of myself because I did, and I do deserve so much more than to be an added statistic paraded around during sexual assault awareness week. I am more than that and my story deserves to be heard.

"MY DECISIONS, LIKE WHAT MOVIE TO WATCH OR WHAT I WOULD WEAR, WERE JUST PASSING ANNOYANCES TO HIM THAT HE BATTED AWAY LIKE FLIES." - KAY Spring 2021 | ETHOS | 39

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