Eliana Xadáni Pérez -Nuñez

Hello! My name is Eliana. I am a Southern California native who grew up in big cities. As a neurodivergent individual, living in a fast-paced environment was challenging at times despite its beauty. Understanding who I was, I am thankful my parents gave me space to play in nature and creatively express with slow and mindful intention. Through this, I feel empowered to live with an open heart and be myself in my truest forms. I grew up with two educators for parents. Through parental exposure and now personal alignment, I have developed a deep appreciation for knowledge and culture sharing in many forms. I appreciate the grassroots, community, university, and other educational spaces I have been in which has allowed me to learn so much about self expression, community care, and wellness practices. 

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As a second generation Chicana, I have been subjected to oppression rooted in racism and ableism in ways that are unique to my personal identity as a queer, neurodivergent, indigenous woman. I experienced medical and academic oppression and abuse, as many oppressed folx from different communities have in some form or another. I am grateful that despite the negative experiences that I have had, I have now found ways to continue to expand on the seeds of creativity, holisitc health, and love for nature that my parents nurtured in me as a child. I hope to offer youth access to these tools, as they can be great healing modalities in todays world.  As such, I am now studying for the completion of both an Education, Democracy and Justice,  and Global and Community Health B.A. at UCSC. Soon, I will be applying to my masters in education, and I hope to eventually expand my work in holistic health into that of doula work.

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Nature is a place where I find most peace and deep connectedness to myself and the world at large. I have a year and a half of experience as an English tutor, helping youth, peers and adults with their writing and communications skills. I participated in weekly training centered around andragogical approaches to social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development during this time. I have also worked as a Park Aide for the California State Parks System for two years, where I welcomed visitors to the park while making nature accessible by providing general information about the park. I also worked on a team of three to develop and facilitate the Junior Rangers free environmental education Program, allowing for children in a large city to roam free in nature and simultaneously learn about the natural sciences. In addition, I worked at a nature preschool for a year focusing on the development of the whole child – physical, cognitive, emotional and social – through use of a play, place, experiential and emergent curriculum in canyons within inner-city locations.

Here at UC Santa Cruz's Center for Agroecology, I have developed the Global Plant Consciousness Lab. The Global Plant Consciousness Lab is a platform for folx of cultural backgrounds from around the world can come together to learn from each other about how we relate to ourselves and each other through the natural world. I intention to hold space so as to decolonize outdoor education as a means to provide equal access to get people back to their roots, hold space for their prospective cultures, and ultimately, allow for a sense of wonder and curiosity towards the natural world. In cross cultural knowledge sharing about how we as individuals, community members, and human beings connect to the earth through things such as stories about nature, holisitic and medicinal uses of plants, food ways, food growing and techniques, traditions, plant relationships to other life forms and intelligences, cooking, and the like, I hope that we can continue to unionize as people with the deep understanding that we are all a part of nature.  Nature can serve as a primal lens to unite us all in the beauty of the natural rhythms of life and our collective hearts as humans on this earth, while celebrating each person's uniqueness as beings in the modern world.​

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 I hope we can organize within our global community in order to reclaim our collective and individual power as feeling, thinking, breathing, hoping, loving, and dreaming people on this earth. I believe that we must take care of ourselves and our communities to foster more localized means of supporting ourselves in order to shift away from those that are doing great harm to the world by weaponizing education, the earth, and ourselves towards each other. 

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May we all find peace in our hearts, the compassion for all that makes us human, the drive to make the world a better place, and a passion within ourselves to be ourselves in all ways, all day.