Human separation from the earth is a wound that runs parallel to our separation from, and violence toward, our innate humanity and care for each other. The same mindset that allows humans to exploit the earth also allows humans to exploit and oppress one another based on race, gender, sexuality, or any other perceived differences. We believe and hope that both can be healed simultaneously, allowing for both human and non-human flourishing and freedom from oppression and exclusion. Our work aims to unlearn and dismantle behaviors and mindsets that allow for the continued marginalization, oppression, and exclusion of groups based on identity or background. We celebrate and encourage the beautiful tendency towards eccentricity and diversity found in the entire natural world, outside the confines and boxes of the dominant modern worldview. We also make many mistakes and humbly work to learn and unlearn as we nurture a regenerative and just culture.
Land and Wilderness
We acknowledge that Wonder operates on and benefits from land historically stolen, through deception, violence, and genocide, from the Ute, Arapahoe, Cheyenne and other indigenous populations. Additionally, we have access to and move freely among lands that were allocated based on extensive displacements, false promises, and broken treaties by white settlers. As we work to connect participants to the earth that sustains us, we work, in age-appropriate ways, to engage themes of settler colonialism, alternatives to private property, and disparity in access and equity.
We also acknowledge that modern ideas of wilderness are rooted in settler perceptions of a North American continent without humans. 19th century European and American romantics that conceived of modern ideas of wilderness did so with the inability to see the ways (historic and ongoing) that indigenous communities interacted ecologically with every landscape on the continent. Landscapes such as grasslands or ponderosa forests that we now see as “wild” and “natural” had been intimately shaped by humans over thousands of years, and are perceived to be “without human impact” due to forced displacement and genocide of indigenous communities. At Wonder we still see the value of imagining a wilderness where humans are only visitors (leave only footprints, take only pictures) and where the non-human world can exist free from human interference, however, we look critically at the ways these romantic ideas have come about, and the injustice of this legacy.
Race, Gender, and Sexuality
Nature connection and outdoor programs in the US have historically been dominated by a white, cisgendered, male, and heterosexual demographic, while both unintentionally or even intentionally, other ethnicities, genders, sexualities, or people with disabilities have been marginalized and excluded. There have also been steep economic barriers to access, whether through the cost of tuition, gear, or proximity to the locations where what we collectively perceive as “nature” exists. Wonder programs and Wonder land are spaces that are supportive and open to participants and visitors of all races, gender identities, and sexual orientation.
Wonder 