WOHELO STATEMENT ON SYSTEMIC RACISM
July 8, 2020
We are in the first week of camp and are currently one of the only camps open in Maine. More will be opening this week but overall it looks like about 20% of camps were able to open. It has been a crazy couple of months trying to figure everything out and we are so glad to have our campers here almost as much as we miss the ones that weren’t able to come. The 4th of July having passed, allows us room to think forward.
Wohelo Statement on Systemic Racism
- Systemic Racism is apparent everywhere and its negative and unfair effects are felt by all people of color. We can’t escape from this reality, we can only try to create a new reality for ourselves and do better.
- At Wohelo we will continue our efforts to work as a team to promote equity and equality by actively supporting our staff and camp participants as well as acknowledging, celebrating, and appreciating differences.
- Wohelo pledges to incorporate a broader education of our campers to include the unfair treatment of people of color over history and now. We will hire a new full time position next summer which we plan to be the start of a permanent educational and support system here at camp.
- We feel the need to address the presence of cultural appropriation that exists in the history of Wohelo. The Luther Gulick Camps were founded by Luther Halsey and Charlotte Gulick who designed many camp traditions that were inspired by the First Nation cultures that had been prevalent in the area before the colonization by Europeans. It is not acceptable to take traditions from a culture while simultaneously suppressing the community to which the culture belongs. This is something that we are not proud to have in our history but also can not ignore. We will do our best to acknowledge and remove those aspects of cultural appropriation that still exist in our camp traditions.
- Black Lives Matter
This is not a one and done statement but the start of a larger conversation that we would like to have as a community. Productive ideas are more than welcomed and we humbly respect all views on this topic. If there is interest we would like to have a forum where, as a camp community these topics can be discussed in a safe and kind environment. We understand that there are pieces missing and look forward to filling the gaps and moving forward as a community.
We can do better.
The Van Winkle Family
