Yana’s work falls into four broad categories:
Group Dynamics
Sustainability & Resilience
Anti-Oppression Work
Organizational Structure & Planning
Group Dynamics work.
Yana often jokes that community would be such a fabulous thing… if it wasn’t for all the damn PEOPLE. The truth is that living together, working together and attempting to cooperate is HARD, largely because our culture teaches us how to compete much more than it teaches us how to get along and deeply honor the truth of others. Yana's work in this area is to guide groups in a combination of unlearning and learning, unmaking and remaking.
Group Process is a blanket term referring to how a group functions. Our standards for group process in our culture are, frankly, dismal. Meetings have a bad rap, and do does the word "process". Fortunately, a lot of work has been done to pioneer better approaches. Yana's work is based in tools, methods and insights that move us from competitive, individualistic and oppressive ways of being toward what she broadly styles as Cooperative Culture.
Under this heading, Yana does a lot of types of work, including:
Functional Consensus Decision-making training, and what she calls "Guerilla Consensus" bringing the benefits of deep inclusion into any decision-making process
Conflict Resolution training. (Please note that Yana does not actually do mediation work, but will be glad to give you a referral to some fabulous humans who do!)
Cooperative Culture development
Here's a few windows into Yana's approach. See also the Approach page on this website.
An interview on the Kosmos Journal podcast, focusing on culture and community.
This 30-minute teaching piece of systems for conflict resolution. (Passcode to access it is reflectivelistening01)
Sustainability & Resilience.
Yana’s earliest professional work was in the field of sustainability, and it remains a core love for her.
Her popular workshop called Rethinking Sustainability draws from the Gaia Education curriculum and Dr. Viola Cordova’s work, and builds on Yana’s own experience with ecovillage living and professional food systems work.
Anti-Oppression work.
"Yana is a wonderful human being, a trained facilitator and mediator, and has been doing a lot of racial justice work here in Laramie, Wyoming... She's taken trainings held by myself & other organizers, as well as trainings across the country. She is dedicated to talking to other white people about racial justice and collective liberation, and she also is profoundly grounded, deeply motivated, and extremely honest."
--Sarah Duncan, SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) Wyoming Organizer
Oppression is a special set of human relations, one that deserves special attention, particular frameworks of understanding and specialized tools to dismantle. "Special" doesn't mean unusual, however. Oppression is, unfortunately, the water we swim in--it can be hard to see for a lot of people, but it affects everything we do with each other. It is also foundational to many aspects of American life, culture and economics. Unpacking oppression is hard but essential work if we are going to arrive at a world that is truly sustainable, resilient and just.
Yana began directly incorporating talk about racism, sexism, classism and a host of other oppression dynamics into her work in 2014, though she started her own learning about these dynamics in her early 20's. She lives on both sides of the oppression dynamic herself and is well aware of both the impacts oppression has on individuals and groups, as well as how hard it can be to see oneself as benefiting from or participating in the oppression of others.
Her goal with this work is to provide three things:
a compassionate space in which to explore and uncover oppression dynamics;
frameworks to understand the basics (including such topics as the privilege gap, cultural appropriation, the impact of oppression on groups and individuals, intersectionality, and the critical role of marginalized voices in culture change) as well as how oppression feeds societal ills such as climate change, poverty and social isolation; and
support for groups to create actionable plans to turn around the oppression dynamics happening within them and among members.
Yana works solo in some cases, but also partners with others whose lived experience is different from hers in some areas, including race and class. This includes a workshop on Classism and Cooperative Economics with Matt Stannard. Most anti-oppression offerings are carefully designed for each group she works with.
Two interviews that can provide some insight into how Yana talks about oppression:
A Sustainable Mind podcast, discussing western privilege with Marjorie Alexander. (Skip to about the ten minute mark where we start talking about race and class.)
KPFA radio in California, on economics and culture.
See also Yana's Patreon page for recent blogs on race and decolonizing our consciousness.
Organizational Structure & Planning work.
This work is almost entirely designed WITH my clients as the needs are varied and your core organization (being a worker owned co-op, an HOA, a nonprofit or a commune) often dictate the box we have to work within.