Author: Rae Erickson

Location: Wolwedans

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

This is an excerpt form Rae’s last blog post that we felt could be addressed on its own.  

Before embarking on this journey, I felt passionate about creating equality for every person, but I was somewhat ill equipped with the tools that are necessary in order to truly advocate or stand up for marginalized populations. Although I understood that there is still a significant presence of racism that is prevalent today, I often struggled with how to identify it, or even successfully initiate a conversation around the unfair things that are happening around the world, especially to people of color. While I cannot pretend like I know all of the answers and solutions to this problem now, I feel infinitely better about how to critically analyze what happens around me. About four days ago, we traveled to NaDEET, a center that has the mission of educating youth and adults about how to live sustainably. During our time there, we also took an excursion to Wolwedans, another desert resort just a 45 minute drive away. What we saw there, however, left us with heavy hearts. One of the managers directed the tour, and left us all unsettled.

Unfortunately, Wolwedans exemplified many of the weaknesses that can occur in companies that are not regulated by the government. Even though nature conservation is a popular topic for many diverse groups of people, it is easy to forget that human rights violations can happen even amidst sustainable efforts. There was a significantly unequal distribution of money between the manager of the reserve and his workers, and there seemed also to be a lack of any kind of positive relationship between his employees and him as well. His attitude towards the people working there was poor at best, and his language often became extremely sexist and condescending. While this experience was upsetting and disturbing to many of the students, myself included, it was also somewhat rewarding and surprising to hear ourselves critically analyze the situation in the way we did, as our perceptions of the tour definitely would have been different had we never had this journey of going through the program and trying to decolonize our minds.