Nearly 15 Years On: Continuing Stories From a Community-Built Camp for Two-Spirit, Queer, Trans, and Nonbinary Youth

• In Event: It's Giving Camp, It's Giving Community: Collaborative Approaches to Queer Resistance

Abstract

CampOUT!, founded in 2009, is a community-based, anti-oppressive leadership camp aims to promote a sense of community and belonging amongst 2SLGBTQAI+ youth. This presentation compares the findings of a five-year ethnography completed in 2014 with insights from an evaluation of camp from 2009 to the present. The presentation highlights three conclusions: 1) camp fosters youths' ability to take risks and experience, and in profound ways, have their gender identities and sexualities accepted; 2) the space/land of camp is crucial to youths' ability to see their own strengths; and 3) is the importance of the always ongoing processes of reconciling and indigenizing camp, and the tensions these beginnings engender. Through intentional community building CampOUT! offers educational possibilities that combat intersectional violence.

Author

• Lisa W. Loutzenheiser, University of British Columbia