Rainbow Leadership Series Ep.3 – Queerstory

We did a dive into queer burner history reflecting back at the people and camps that pave the way forward to the Queerborhood of today. We were joined by Harley K. Dubois of the Burning Man project. See more details about Harley below.

The discussion was broadcasted life on Facebook on our Queerburners page.

  • Toaster did a quick Powerpoint on Queerburner history
  • Talked briefly about the 2016 meeting with Placement and survey
  • Introduced Harley and some stories about the early days of Burning Man in Black Rock City and queers over the years.

A founding member of Black Rock City LLC, Harley K. Dubois has over 25 years of project management, art and city planning experience. As the City Manager of Black Rock City for over 10 years, Harley oversaw both the Playa Safety Council and Community Services departments, ensuring the citizens of BRC are happy and safe, including ingress, life on playa, and egress. She originated theme camp placement, the Greeters, Playa Info, and Burning Man Information Radio, and has kindled the development of all other Community Service teams. Harley also created and maintains a comprehensive training and self-development program for the Burning Man staff, fostering volunteerism and cross-departmental communication.

Harley was a founding member of the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF), where she created and chaired the Grants to Artists committee and acted as the foundation’s liaison with the Burning Man Project. She worked closely with the Executive Director and other staff members in conducting day-to-day operations. As Chief Transition Officer Harley was responsible for the merging of Black Rock City LLC, BRAF, and Burners Without Borders into the Burning Man Project. She helped to complete the merging of art related programs into a unified Burning Man Arts program. She is passionate about seeing volunteerism fully integrated into all BMP operations, and is continuing to integrate and develop BMP programs and infrastructure to support Burning Man’s role as a network node for our global expansion.

Harley has an extensive background in the visual and performing arts and serves as a director on the board of Illuminate, which rallies large groups of people together to create impossible works of public art. In 2016, Harley was named one of four Founding Board Members of the Nation of Makers independent nonprofit, whose mission is to provide more Americans access to the spaces, communities, and tools to make more and consume less. She has been a fitness director and a San Francisco fire fighter. (BurningMan.Org)

Slide 1: Welcome everyone. This is just a brief look back into our history of queer culture and our influence on the culture of Burning Man.

This conversation hardly scratches the surface as there are a lot of people who have driven and led projects over the years may not get the recognition they deserve.

There are people like Kitten, who as a camp and community leader, supported the mission of queerburners in it’s earliest times to help build it to what it is today. That included Foxy from Beaverton, Cindy (NoPants) from Gender Blender, the late Mario Cisneros from Moonbow Camp, and the late Fathom from Penguin camp and others over time.
Kitten is heavily engaged with the local indigenous populations which serves the Burning Man community, even if not officially, as an ambassador to the community.
Burning Man history is a force of its own and is well detailed at Burning Man (dot) Org.
The 1986 solstice celebration at Baker Beach migrated in a few short years to a distant place in the desert.
The Back Rock Desert became home to something new in 1990 and continued to grow from there.
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