Sunny Dakota

Sunny Dakota is a facilitator, organizer, and performance artist living in Portland, Oregon (traditional lands of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tumwater, Watlala bands of the Chinook, and the Tualatin Kalapuya). Sunny is a mixed-race person of Oglala Lakota, Roma, Jewish, and English ancestry.

Sunny’s work focuses on building the skills and alignment of groups so that they are able to build visionary futures, navigate conflict, and be creative forces for change communities. They learned facilitation and community organizing using Theatre of the Oppressed in 2009 and have since used it to help people intervene in oppressive situations & communities find solutions to the unique challenges they face.

They have learned in environmental justice, queer and trans people of color, two-spirit and interpersonal violence prevention movements for over a decade. Their work has involved coalition building, electoral organizing, national climate movement strategy, direct action, statewide LGBTQ policy, and more.

Sunny’s most treasured facilitation memories are of training for mass mobilizations, supporting the capacity for direct action in Indigenous communities, and long visioning sessions that gave birth to projects by & for queer and trans people of color. Their journey has been deeply informed by who they are— queer, trans, two-spirit, mixed-race, neurodiverse, and more.