Community Panel

Canada approaches life with big ideas, passion, compassion, and empathy, compelled to hold and love whatever comes to her. As a Black and Indigenous, queer woman, Canada brings her lived experience to each aspect of her life. Professionally she does this through her work in behavioral healthcare and death care. Personally she lives her dreams through urban homesteading in Portland with her 3 goats and hodgepodge of witchy herbs and plants. She also loves starting creative projects that she eventually finishes. Canada was honored with the Trillium Health Mental Health Hero award in 2021 for her work in grief readiness and response and suicide prevention. Typically Canada can be found in the community at local thrift stores or gluten free bakeries.

Kekainui (or Kai) has gone by the name Nic or Nicole Francisco for a long time, but they are moving into a new Hawaiian name to better represent their identity in 'ōlelo Hawai'i.

Kai is a mixed-race Kānaka Maoli from Hawai’i currently living on occupied lands of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tumwater, Chinook, Kalapuya, and other indigenous peoples of the Columbia River (Portland, Oregon). Kai is a social justice educator with a background in gender and sexuality studies, critical prison studies, and American political development. They are passionate about carceral justice that centers those most vulnerable to oppression and violence, which means organizing by and for queer and trans BIPOC prisoners. 

Kai is the Director of the Women’s Resource Center at PSU, working to build feminist leadership opportunities and a safer campus experience for marginalized students. At the heart of Kai's work is collective production, challenging capitalist impulses and ideology in all that they do, and theorizing and implementing liberatory practices in higher education. They believe that we must be ambitious in our visions of freedom and we must practice those liberatory visions in our everyday lives.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and I identify as Xicanx, queer, and non-binary. In 2020, I graduated with an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree in Feminist Studies, with a concentration in Law, Politics, and Social Change, from the University of California, Santa Cruz. During my time as a student, I workshopped events for my peers on topics varying from sexuality and gender dynamics to trauma and power dynamics within Latino communities. This work nourished and strengthened my passion for student affairs. Currently, I work to provide Portland State’s Latine student community with programming that enhances student life, nourishes a sense of belonging, and increases Latine student retention and graduation. Outside of academia, I enjoy reading queer, feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist theories, from the likes of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, *sometimes* Gloria Anzaldua, Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis. I am a huge fan of the TV show Futurama, the X-Men franchise, and CBS’s Survivor. For astrology lovers out there, I am Aquarius sun, Pisces Moon, and Taurus Rising.