Collective Care

Native Sovereignty and Black Liberation are two parts of the same braid.

We are peoples who have had our lands stolen and we have been stolen from our lands. We are Indigenous peoples disconnected from our lands through occupation and kidnapping. Our solidarity is crucial to dismantling the foundation and centuries-long legacy of oppression in the Americas, from settler colonialism and enslavement to ongoing systemic oppression. Our focus on sovereignty and liberation calls into question imperialism and global systems of capitalism. Our Black Native and Afro Indigenous relatives, our traditions and worldviews, adaptive capacities, and ways of being, and relating to each other, to humanity, other beings, and the planet are the key to our shared survival and that of everyone and every being

Native Sovereignty

Gender and sexual diversity are woven into the spiritual practices of Indigenous cultures. Reclaiming these expansive understandings of LGBTQIA+ people are important to healing our communities. Sovereignty and stewardship - including traditional and evolving forms of governance and economics - honor the sacredness of the earth - protecting land, water, air, and other beings. Native people in the Americas lead struggles that are key to ending the occupation of, and extraction from, Indigenous territories and people the world over. QWOCMAP seeks to contribute and support the sovereignty of Native peoples here and Indigenous peoples around the world. This shapes how we share resources, how we approach our work, and seek to move with cultural humility as good relations.

Black Liberation

As Combahee River Collective wrote, the liberation of Black lesbians — transgender Black people and queer Black people, and all Black people — necessitates dismantling all forms of oppression. Black liberation is rooted in the history and present joys, struggles, and experiences of Black communities in the Americas and through the Diaspora, it is global in its solidarity. It is a collective body of thought and practice, which include decolonialism, and ending imperialism and capitalism. It is intersectional, interconnected, and multi-dimensional, grounded in the feminism and womanism of queer and transgender Black women. It seeks to understand and analyze systems, including environmental racism, drawing from radical traditions of justice, abolition, and healing. It affirms and celebrates Black culture and history, while its futurism imagines new possibilities through a combination of spirituality, activism, and creativity. Black liberation is our organizational foundation, not a program area. It shapes how we view leadership and joy.

Drawn from the inclusive feminism of Black lesbians and Black trans women, we challenge, prevent, and heal violence and harm. We understand that the criminalization of our communities — including surveillance, policing, and control — worsens the ongoing crises we face. We understand that violence is not simply an individual issue of interpersonal harm with individual solutions; it is an issue of the right to violence claimed by the state, and its systems, and structures. We understand that interpersonal violence and structural violence have to be addressed together.

We dream of strategies to eliminate intersecting forms of oppression. We also seek alternatives to policies like militarization, and concrete forms like prisons and police.

We seek social justice and change, and envision transformative and restorative practices that provide, support, and expand collective care. It isn’t an add-on — it’s how we operate. Our feminist thought and practices are embedded in organizational structure, from how we handle conflict to how we build safety. We know that we keep each other safe, that communities can heal, that we can practice for the kind of world that we want to live in.

As a result, we both imagine and create a thriving future for us all.

Disability justice is more than accessibility and accommodations. It shapes our craft as filmmakers, it is a part of our creative process, and built into every film. It is the root of our programs and our operations.

The principles of Disability Justice recognize the interconnectedness of social justice issues and forms of oppression. Therefore, our liberation is collective just like access is collective. We seek to embody interdependence, wholeness, and sustainability in our work together. We are led by disabled people and we intentionally follow leadership of the most impacted and most vulnerable. We commit to our anti-capitalist politics along with cross-disability solidarity and cross-movement organizing. We love and live and learn adaptive strategies to create freedom in the present and recast the future of humanity.

Film training and development are expensive. Acquiring the skills and tools for creative expression in this art form is economically unfeasible for most of our community. Once we start making films, we are blocked from continuing due to the lack of resources and support. This pushes us out of the field of filmmaking altogether. Film production budgets are measured by the finished minute, with costs increasing exponentially from micro-budget to independent to studio to blockbuster films. And movie theater tickets start high and increase, film festival ticket prices are inaccessible, making regular film watching costly.

The industry says that’s just the business. But in a media-saturated society, this economic injustice is a form of censorship. The result is that LBTQIA+ people of color are little heard and often forcibly silenced.

In our work, we sow the seeds for a just transition, away from extractive economies that concentrate wealth and power, force consumerism, expand militarism, and dig, burn, and then dump natural and other resources. We plant the roots of visionary, living economies that focus on regeneration, caring and sacredness, ecological and social well-being, and deep participatory democracy. We nourish solidarity economy ecosystems where all of the things that our communities need — housing, food, education, and arts & culture — are stewarded by and for our communities.