Meet our "TAG" Team
We are passionate creatives who are committed to pursing joy, liberation, and healing in all that we do. Hover over the diverse identities that make up The Abolition Garden.
Indigenous
INDIGENOUS
Women
WOMEN
CREATIVES
CREATIVES
ASIAN
ASIAN
FARMERS
FARMERS
BLACK
BLACK
PEOPLE
PEOPLE
XICANA
WOMEN
Sydónne Blake (she/her)
Sydónne is a Black and Indigenous educator and land steward working in the Denver-metro area. She is Yamaye Taíno through her maternal line; her grandmother is Sunshine Blair and her mother is Michelle Blake. Growing up primarily in the rural southern U.S., she has a deeply formed relationship with the land and their layered history, specifically the relationship between the land and Black and Indigenous experiences. Being raised closely in her culture, she approaches her work with the land and community through her own Afro-Indigenous cultural lens, applying the teachings of her family to her farming and relationships. Her passion centers around promoting healing within BIPOC communities through reestablishing reciprocal relationships with nature, our traditional foodways, and each other. Through her artistic practice, she also hopes to empower her community to tell their own stories and radically imagine their futures.
Today, Sydónne works in many forms within her community: farmer, educator, visual storyteller. She is a licensed Trauma-informed Care Practitioner, with 10 years of working with BIPOC youth as an educator and mentor. She also holds a bachelor's in Landscape Architecture, and works as and Environmental Designer with a focus on restorative systems that heal both land and communities. She also most recently stepped into her role as a wildland firefighter, or preferred "fire lighter", as a means to deepen her understanding of rooted medicinal practices that generate renewal. Coming from her own line of cultural burners, this new journey has invigorated her interest in cultural burning and allowing her to speak the nonverbal language of fire.
Huệ Helen Nguyễn (she/her)
Huệ Helen Nguyá»…n is a proud Vietnamese descendant on her journey to reconnect with her cultural roots and to be in right relationship with Mother Earth due to her family’s severance from the(ir home)land caused by decades of war and ongoing colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. As she finds her way back and forward, she hopes to co-create accessible spaces for others who have been systematically removed and excluded from the Land while sharing the reminder that we all come from the Earth. Her spark for art and love for her community and the Land guides everything she does. Helen hopes to play a small part in leaving this world better than when she first entered and becoming a good ancestor for future generations to come (which includes the Land and our more-than-human kin). She is looking forward to building new worlds together rooted in love, collective care and liberation.
Other random facts about Helen: she was born and raised in Colorado— on Ute, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne lands. Helen holds a bachelor's in Human Services with a concentration in Mental Health Counseling. Although she has a background in mental health counseling, she focuses her energy on dismantling the systems of oppression that created the symptoms/ trauma in the first place and creating holistic and decolonial ways of healing and being in community. Helen is a caregiver, creative designer, and community organizer. She works with multiple local organizations to bring healing, community care & interdependence, creativity & imagination through art, mutual aid, and tending the Land.
Harmony Esqueda (she/her)
Harmony is a queer Xicana with roots in Guadalajara, Jalisco and Guanajuato, Guanajuato as well as New Mexico. Harmony’s first memories with food start where she grew up in Lynwood, California (on the occupied ancestral lands of Kizh, Chumash, Tongva, Tataviam Indigenous people to name a few). Here, she fondly remembers watching her abuela propagate fig trees, and tend to her family’s límon and guayaba trees - as well her tia’s chiles potted up on her doorstep. Without much land to work with, it was out of these containers and pots in concrete backyards that Harmony saw her ancestors' resilience rise from the soil. Harmony’s grandparents and great grandparents were migrant farm workers throughout Texas and Colorado. This history of racialized land and labor extraction and exploitation has set Harmony on a path to reclaim and radically practice traditional ancestral foodways. From these experiences she has learned how keeping seeds and land based practices thriving has cultivated resistance to capitalism, individualism, and colonialism.
Harmony has been farming for the past 3 seasons between Pennsylvania and Colorado. An important part of her farming journey has been with animals including cows, chicken, sheep, and goats. She now has a certification in Permaculture Design (taken through a critical lens) and is currently in a Food Forestry Training Program. She is hyped to be gathering with community to grow culturally relevant foods, share sacred space, and make medicine and meals with friends and family.