Summer is here, and people are kicking it off by getting out into nature. But those in communities of color can often feel excluded from natural spaces and from participating in activities like hiking and camping.

People of Color Outdoors is a local nonprofit that works to build community in the Portland area through outdoor excursions. It’s recently received multiple grants to continue this work and is kicking off birding programs with the Bird Alliance of Oregon. POCO is also featured in a film that’s part of an exhibit at the Tillamook Forest Center and an upcoming Oregon Field Guide piece.

Pamela Slaughter is the executive director and founder of POCO. She joins us to talk more about the organization’s mission and recent initiatives.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Communities of color can often feel excluded from natural spaces, or unwelcome participating in activities like hiking and camping. People of Color Outdoors (POCO) is a local nonprofit that was formed to change that. It works to build community in the Portland area through outdoor excursions. The nonprofit recently received grants to continue this work, and it’s kicking off birding programs with the Bird Alliance of Oregon. Pamela Slaughter is the executive director and founder of POCO. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.

Pamela Slaughter: Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here.

Miller: You grew up in Portland. What was your relationship with natural spaces like as a kid?

Slaughter: Well, my mother was from Chicago, and her family lost their possessions in the Vanport flood. So they ended up staying here. And my mom was very happy because growing up in a big city was very different. She pretty much transferred her love of nature to myself and my siblings.

Miller: And you did the same thing to your kids?

Slaughter: Absolutely. It’s very healing. And as a child when I was 10, I had the opportunity after spending like every day after school in the vacant lots that I thought at the time was the woods, ‘till I went to camp and realized “no, it’s just a vacant lot.”

Miller: But it was outside, and it was wild for you.

Slaughter: It was outside, it was overgrown, there were bunnies there, so it felt wild. Getting on the bike and going to our parks. And also my uncle had a farm, so I was able to go there, still in nature, a little bit different. But then when I was 10, we went to Chicago with my sister, and we visited family there and got to see what it was like not to have nature all around, not to have trees.

Miller: To be in a real big city.

Slaughter: Exactly. And it actually caused me some stress. By the end of the summer, I was a little anxious, and I just wanted to be out in the woods.

Miller: Do you mind telling us the story of what happened later in your life, when you went on a hike one day when your son was eight and your daughter was seven?

Slaughter: We used to go out every weekend, the way I grew up, and we used to hike all over, not just on the east side, but on the west side and outside of Portland. Once we were hiking and some people saw us. I could see that they were skinheads. This was in the days of skinheads. We stepped off the path so that we wouldn’t have any conflicts, and they followed us off. And it was pretty traumatic. They didn’t touch us, but they crowded around and said some things that were threatening and very scary for my children and myself, especially because I knew I couldn’t protect the children. It was a terrible feeling.

Miller: How were they affected by that incident?

Slaughter: It was traumatic for them. It made them feel afraid to go out on trails in the future. That day that we had that incident, my son was running a little bit ahead of me. He had come close to a white woman who was hiking, and actually they initially thought she was with him, so she actually dealt with a little hostility herself until they realized that he was with us, we kind of came around the curve. It was just a couple of seconds. But it was pretty scary for him. Scary for all of us. We ended up, like I said, getting him, stepping off the path. But it was too late. And it did affect him, especially because he had one second longer than my daughter and myself. My daughter pretty much overcame it, and my son never did.

Miller: As you’ve written on your website, that experience and others led you to Google the phrase at one point “Black people hiking together.” What were you searching for? What did you want?

Slaughter: It was so many years later, now I was a grandmother and my grandson had gone into an environmental program. And we walked into the room a little bit late, but right before we got to the room, we heard a crash, and we heard one of his who he thought was his new friends, one of them said “let’s just say that brown boy did it.” And it was pretty devastating to him. So that’s what prompted me. And in addition to that, my grandson and my two nephews – we call the “tripod” in my family – they were starting to get new looks. When they were little, they were cute. And now they’re big, people are looking at them very differently. They felt that, and they were always checking with me to see if it was OK for us to be wherever we were.

Miller: You ended up finding the Portland Chapter of Outdoor Afro. What was it like for you to take part in those events?

Slaughter: I actually called to ask to start the Portland chapter.

Miller: Oh, I misunderstood. The group existed, but you wanted to create the Portland chapter.

Slaughter: Exactly. I felt like we needed it. They didn’t know if there was a large enough Black population to host one here. But I told them “We’re here, and we’re having problems. We’re not always safe or welcome.”

Miller: As that name makes clear, that group is specifically for Black people. Why did you decide to open up to a broader community of anyone who identifies as a Person of Color?

Slaughter: Outdoor Afro was amazing, but I was constantly being asked by people that were not Black: Asian people, Latino people, Indigenous people, if they could join, because they were having similar problems.

Miller: And you wanted to be more inclusive.

Slaughter: I did. At first I was just going to take a break. But one of my members, Rikeem Sholes, who now has his own group, Climbers of Color, he ended up really talking me into starting a new group, and he offered to help. That’s how I ended up starting People of Color Outdoors.

Miller: What kinds of events does POCO put on these days?

Slaughter: We host about 60 outings a year, and that includes hiking, paddling, fishing, camping. We have four camps this summer. We do a little bit of everything. Half of what we do is community building. In a gentrified city, it’s hard to find people that have a lot in common with you. That’s the case for everybody, but then when you’re a Person of Color, it’s multiplied, the difficulty.

Miller: How do you build community?

Slaughter: Well, mainly spending time together in beautiful places where you can bond together, having wonderful experiences, meals. We have a nature education program, People of Color Outdoors Guardians. And the Guardians, we spend half the time playing games to get to know each other, and then the other half is learning and getting great nature education.

Miller: One of the things I understand that you do is to go repeatedly to some given part, to keep going back to a place. What’s the idea behind that?

Slaughter: Mainly because if you go once it feels like a field trip, it’s something that you’re going to experience that one time, and that’s it. If you go repeatedly, it starts to feel like you belong there. You can build a connection, you know that place, and then you want to start showing it to other people. The goal is not to hoard people and have them with us forever. The goal is to help people to bond together, so that we build an outdoor community.

Miller: The people who are joining your events, how many of them are like you, people for whom being outdoors has been a lifelong need? You talked about being in Chicago and by the end of that summer just being anxious because you were surrounded by asphalt.

Slaughter: I was a mess.

Miller: So this is clearly something you’ve done your whole life. It was important for you to figure out a way to be outside in a way that felt safe. That’s one version of this. Another is people who, for whatever reason, have really not spent too much time outdoors up till now. Who do you find is coming more often to your events?

Slaughter: The latter.

Miller: So you’re really introducing people who haven’t spent too much time on trails or in marshes or along some wetland. You’re introducing them?

Slaughter: I am introducing them. And I’m not trying to say there’s something special about me. It’s just that people have had some traumatic histories. I have never been hiking with my father to this day. Although he loves the outdoors, he loves nature, he was raised on a farm. But he has seen horrible things happen in the woods, and he won’t go hiking with me. Every single Person of Color I know, regardless of their color, every single person knows somebody that had a scary experience. There’s not a lot of incentive to just go walking in the woods where you’ve never been before, where you might have a map but you might not, you still might get lost and you don’t know who’s there. And I’ve heard stories.

Now people aren’t walking around terrified. A lot of people simply think it’s not worth the risk. It’s like people that swim but they don’t go surfing, people that swim but they don’t go scuba diving. It’s not worth the risk. And so there are a lot of places close to home. There are a lot of touristy places. There’s ways to enjoy nature without going deep into nature.

Miller: Can you tell us about the partnership that you’ve developed with the Bird Alliance of Oregon?

Slaughter: Oh, so excited about that. We have a lot of people that love to go bird watching. Bird Alliance does walks with us about four times a year. And a lot of our members want to know more. So one of the things we do is leadership development. We have a grant that is going to allow us to do a two year program, training people for a whole year, and then having them lead for another year. So we’ll be able to lead our own bird walks. And that’s pretty exciting.

Miller: What’s another upcoming event you’re excited about?

Slaughter: Well, we’ll be camping this weekend at Oxbow, that’s exciting. We’ll be camping at Timothy Lake next month, that’s exciting. We’ll be going to Camp Kiwanilong, a series of day camps. And then again in November, we’ll be in the Wallowas in September. So those are all exciting things.

Miller: Pamela Slaughter, thanks so much.

Slaughter: Oh, yeah. Anytime.

Miller: Pamela Slaughter is the executive director and founder of POCO. It stands for People of Color Outdoors.

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