There’s a new hair salon in downtown Corvallis, and it’s the first Black-owned salon, specializing in braids, weaves, extensions, and more. Cali’s Hands Braiding Studio, which celebrated its grand opening last week, is run by Christal Thompson, who moved from Bakersfield, California to Corvallis in 2015 with her five children.
“I love the art and all the things you can do with our hair, so many different styles and colors,” said Thompson. “Hair is very important, especially in the Black community, and needs to be well taken care of. With that comes shampooing, conditioning, moisturizing, and last but not least the beautiful style.”
Thompson added that another reason she decided to open this salon is because she enjoys making people, particularly Black community members, feel good by helping them look good and experience greater confidence and pride in their hair.
“I think it is important to have a Black hair salon because we also need to fit in and have a place to get dolled up, and have someone to talk to about the importance and beauty of our hair,” she said. “Most people have to travel far just to get some braids or even just a natural style, but having a salon to go to in town is amazing and helps ease a few minds on what to do with their hair.”
The salon also has a small shelf of books by Black authors, most of which revolve around the beauty, kinship, and intersectional struggles of Black women and girls, including Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown, Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham, In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lola Akinmade Åkerström, and Black Girls Must Be Magic by Jayne Allen.
“I love how the books break down things about the Black community and tell important stories and times,” said Thompson. “I have them there so people can see that we are spoken about and can achieve anything we put our minds to. I will try to have many other books swapping them out, and plan on having them there so people can spot them and maybe find one they like.”
She continued, “I hope that with this being one of the first Black-owned businesses or salons here in Corvallis, I can help more people and show people that your time will come; you just need to be focused and keep your eyes open for the opportunities when they come your way.”
Cali’s Hands is in the Madison Plaza, located on 425 SW Madison Ave. To book an appointment, send a DM (Direct Message) to Thompson through her Instagram, where you can see examples of her work.
Free Resources, Arts & Crafts, Concert at Basic Needs Center: This Thursday, Sept. 29, the Oregon State University Basic Needs Center (BNC), a community-building support and resource hub for OSU students experiencing poverty, is hosting a free Fall Welcome Party, and everyone – students and Corvallis community members alike – is invited.
There will be food and snacks, a photo booth, arts and crafts activities, video games, an open mic, and more. Mutual aid organizers with the Corvallis Really Really Free Market (RRFM) will also be providing free clothes and zines at the event. Plus, starting at 6:00 p.m., an all-ages concert will be performed by local bands and artists – most of whom are also active in the Corvallis DIY scene, including Polypore, an emo/art-punk band whose members also created the Mid-Willamette Scene Seams project and a zine about accessibility and disability justice in DIY spaces; Moonside, a webcore, footwork, and IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) performer; and Jay & Hex, a queer folk/country punk band.
“We’ve been really lucky to get to work with incredible groups like RRFM, Bitter Half Booking, and the Basic Needs Center. All of these folks are out in our community every day putting in the work, and we admire them so much and look forward to every opportunity we have to support them through our music,” said Hannah Hex. “We really can’t understate how incredible it is to play shows where organizers provide vital community resources, prioritize safety, and pay close attention to accessibility to folks who have historically been excluded. This is especially close to our hearts as a queer femme-led band. Being able to experience, create, and share art in a setting where one feels safe to exist as their whole and unyielding self is a gift everyone deserves.”
The Fall Welcome Party will take place from 4 – 8 p.m. at the Champinefu Lodge, located on 1030 SW Madison Ave. To learn more about the different resources and support the BNC offers, as well as ways to get involved and/or connect with the BNC team, check out the center’s website.
Invisiblized Women and Girls on the Frontlines of Climate Justice: Luhui Whitebear, a Coastal Chumash assistant professor in the OSU School of Language, Culture, and Society and Center Director of Kaku-Ixt Mana Ina Haws, authored a chapter featured in the second edition of Women Worldwide: Transnational Feminist Perspectives, published in summer of this year. Titled “Women and Environmental Politics”, the chapter takes an overarching look at the ways in which marginalized women and girls – cisgendered and trans – from around the world have raised their voices against the myriad impacts of colonialism, capitalism, and globalization on both Indigenous communities and the planet throughout history, and whose cultural understandings of the earth illustrate the root causes of the “global environmental crisis in which we all live.”
Whitebear also highlights the anti-Indigeneity and Indigenous erasure that remains all too common in contemporary environmental politics and activism.
“Environmental laws and policies in place throughout the world have been constructed and decided upon by settler nations; that is, those peoples who have moved into an area already occupied and taken it over for their own occupation and use,” she wrote. “The impacts on Indigenous people and future generations have not historically been taken into consideration. Even activism and other movements that work for change to address the climate crisis operate within the settler framework: plans and policies are constructed by those who benefit from the colonization.”
Whitebear continued that it is difficult to fully bring concerns about the environmental impacts of settler policies because these systems were created with the intention of excluding Indigenous – in particular Indigenous women’s – voices, as well as those of women of color more broadly. Later on in the chapter, she goes on to cite Indigenous women and girls – living and deceased – from around the world who have been on the frontlines of resisting and organizing against ongoing settler-colonial exploitation of ancestral lands, waters, and lifeways, including Haunani-Kay Trask, a Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawai’i) poet, educator, and activist who was radically outspoken about the social, cultural, and environmental impacts of U.S. tourism and military occupation on Hawaiian lands and peoples.
“Those on the front line are doing incredible work to help their communities thrive as best they can in the current conditions,” wrote Whitebear. “They also show the rest of the world what is possible. By breaking away from a settler colonial lens, we can learn from these frontline women and girls about leadership, hope, and direction for positive change.”
To read the full chapter, click here. Whitebear also expanded on this topic with other Indigenous activists, scholars, and artists in a Corvallis Advocate CitySpeak live streamed on July 19, “Going Beyond Indigenous Land Acknowledgments in Corvallis”, the recording of which can be accessed here.
Speaking of Haunani-Kay Trask: CALYX Journal, a Corvallis-based independent publisher of art and literature by women founded in 1976, was the press that published Trask’s first collection of poems, Light in the Crevice Never Seen, in 1994 and a revised edition in 1999 – the first poetry book by a Native Hawaiian to be published in North America.
Trask, who passed away on July 3, 2021, was commemorated in a memoriam featured in Volume 32, Issue 3 of CALYX Journal, written by American poet and editor Eleanor Wilner, who knew Trask personally.
“When you have seen the history of the islands through her eyes – which her political writing and her poetry, all of a piece, still make possible, you will understand how loving identity with the islands – this earth glows the color / of my skin – is inseparable from mourning the desecration of its land and the dispossession of its people: there is nothing / certain in this world // except loss for our people // and a silent grief, grieving,” wrote Wilner.
Wilner recounted her impressions of Trask upon meeting her and hearing her speak at a massive 1993 protest as part of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, in which over 15,000 Native Hawaiians and allies marched through Honolulu to ‘Iolani Palace in commemoration and protest of the American overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom 100 years earlier. Prior to the march, Trask had given Wilner an immersive history of American invasion, theft, and occupation of Hawaiian lands and violence against Hawaiian peoples, which she also touched on in the preface of Light in the Crevice Never Seen: “For over one hundred generations, we tended the earth. Then, in 1778, white people arrived on our shores. They brought syphilis and tuberculosis, iron and capitalism. And they also brought violence, the violence of first contact, the violence of plague and death, the violence of dispossession.”
According to Wilner, Trask’s sister Mililani said at the time of her death that Trask would have wanted to be remembered as a poet and teacher, always introducing herself first and foremost as a Hawaiian woman poet.
“Poetry is where the language rises like hot lava in fury against the damages of dispossession and tourism’s saccharine, prostituted version of Native culture. And poetry is where the islands jewelled with fern are re-possessed, ancestral powers the depth charge in new vision,” wrote Wilner. “Her sensual poems, at times resembling the powerful chant tradition of ancient hula, have their English turned to the sounds of Hawaiian language – I bring you / pa’akai, lu’au leaves / a bowl of sour poi, the wind blows cool from Ko’olau – which Hanani described as sounding like water flowing over rocks. Its music of melody and resistance, liquid vowels with the percussive glottal stops and hard consonants, are scattered through the poems, suggesting both dismembered history of Hawai’i and the culture’s irrepressible presence and survival, as each word conjures up a place, a god, a passion (and Hanani provides a generous Hawaiian glossary and notes throughout the books).”
The memoriam ends with two poems from Light in the Crevice Never Seen, the revised edition of which can be purchased from CALYX’s website here.
By Emilie Ratcliff
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