By Sofia Malo
Adjunct Faculty for the Native Pathways Program, Hailey Maria Salazar, shares her path to finding courage, community and coping as an Indigenous woman at Evergreen State College.
Did you happen to see a woman on the side of the road wearing a big sun hat with feathers, holding a cello, during the fall of 2012? If you did, you witnessed Hailey Maria Salazar hitchhiking her way up to Evergreen State College to start as a first year.
Hailey Maria Salazar (Not Hailey. Hailey Maria or Maria) is many things. Firstly, she’s Indigenous – Yoeme, enrolled with the Yaqui’s of Southern California, and from the Sierra Madres people in Mexico. She’s a scholar, a creative and the medicine keeper of her lineage. Before she was a professor at Evergreen State College, she was a gifted student and self-proclaimed “weird kid” from Encanto, a neighborhood in San Diego.
A perfect day for young Hailey Maria would consist of waking up at her abuelita’s house, a mug of hot lemongrass tea already waiting for her. She and her abuelita would eat breakfast and crochet until it was time for Hailey Maria to take her bird Rufus, a white cockatoo, to the park. Perched on Salazar’s shoulder, she recalls that Rufus would bob her head and throw her mohawk up and down. “She was so fucking punk, I loved it” Salazar recollects. If she was in elementary school, she would then hang out with her favorite science teacher, Ms. Lynn Howard to look at the pond ecosystem on their school’s campus. If not, she’d go to the Geisel library and read a non-fiction book or two, hang out with some plants, and play her cello until sunset.
Hailey Maria went to The Preuss School UCSD, “a charter school for low-income scholars who strive to be the first in their families to graduate from college.” Located on University of San Diego’s campus, Salazar wrestled with, “this weird contrast of going to school at one of the top universities with this weird research school for kids like (herself), wearing plaid skirts, polo shirts, and then going home – back to the hood.” On her school bus during the drive home, she would change out of her uniform, but also out of the way that she talked and acted. The next morning, she would metamorphosize again and so on, becoming a master of code-switching.
After experiencing many of the systemic side-effects of living in poverty, Hailey Maria, “knew that socially and environmentally (San Diego) was not a good place for (her) to be.” When she was 17, she moved to Portland to study international relations, classical music and Spanish at Pacific University. One fateful day, after being offered only 4 credits to independently research international policy’s impact on Indigenous communities’ relationships with plants, Salazar went to the Office of Diversity on campus. Here, she was told by the director that she didn’t belong at Pacific University. After some outrage on her part, he explained that she belonged at Evergreen State College, and that’s where she could do her research.
Flash forward to that fall day in 2012. When she arrived at Evergreen, she found that none of the credits from her previous charter school transferred, causing her to start over. “I was like, ‘I’m going to start fresh, I’m 18 and I love studying!’ So I studied everything that I could,” She affirms. Ranging from sustainability and science to dance and music, Hailey Maria was enjoying her time at Evergreen, and then she dropped out. She ran a research and development company, built a nuclear fusion reactor, and received cancer treatments in her many years unenrolled at Evergreen. When she was well, she decided she needed to do something different.
She came back to Evergreen, studied with Yvonne Peterson and Gary Peterson and fell in love with the Indigenous Studies department. “It felt like they were hiding this gem, this beautiful gem of a wealth of knowledge – the legitimization of Indigenous knowledge systems. I thought ‘This is what I’ve been looking to do this whole time!’” Salazar reminisces.
Ultimately, Hailey Maria became employed as an adjunct faculty at Evergreen. She works for the Native Pathways Program (NPP) – a place of belonging and learning from an Indigenous perspective. Though she loves the work she does for students in the NPP, she teeters back and forth on a fine line. Like many people of color who occupy predominantly white spaces, she finds herself situated between joy/sorrow, strategy/reaction and generosity/sacrifice. When struggling to cope, she converses with herself, “‘What can you do to take care of yourself, what is within your power?’ My privilege to support other people. My ability to be in a good community. Acts of resistance. Knowing that this isn’t always forever.”
The sorrow still seeps into her life though, it will always be present. “When you have knowledge – a form of power – it’s hard not to get jaded… When I was passed the medicine basket, I felt this very deep sadness because I knew I was going to see a lot of bad things in my life,” she ruminates. With that being said, the medicine basket is also a blessing, and represents a lot of pride and responsibility for Salazar. She understands that though she will live a very challenged life, she is able to overcome what she sees.
Hailey Maria accepts her reality as being simultaneously happy and sad, though she uses her joy to serve those around her. “I feel like I’m a cosmic cheerleader! I can really relate to people when they’re sharing with me, I continue to offer support, resources, and a listening ear. It feels good to be able to do that. It makes it a little easier for me to keep going.”
When asked, Hailey Maria wished this knowledge on her younger self along with encouragement to rest. “Rest, because the war is long… I hate using words of violence but we face violence. We experience violence, and we also internalize it. We’re violent with ourselves.” Rest is one of Hailey Maria’s many forms of resistance, as well as joy. Coupled with changing lives and institutions, she implores that we enjoy our existence and have gratitude for life.
And to current students of color at Evergreen, Hailey Maria urges us to find each other. She encourages us to open ourselves up to new experiences, to go to that random event on that one poster and to understand we all are here craving community with one another. Additionally, she insists, “Please know that there are people who believe in you here. Like me, I believe in you. If you ever need a pep talk, reach out! If you need a cosmic cheerleader, a cafecito, some té, a snack, come over!”
If you want to connect with Hailey Maria, email her at hailey_maria.salazar@evergeen.edu or visit her office at Lab II – 3269.
