IWO LOGo + Story
We are so excited to launch and share the official logo for Indigenous Women Outdoors! Founder Myia Antone ask IWO’s friends Melissa West Morrison and Robin Beyers to design this piece. We are so in love with the final product, as well as the process of working with these two. We are so honoured and grateful for their work and the pieces of themselves that they share with us in this relationship. Please continue to read on to listen to Melissa’s words on more about this piece and the inspiration and process between IWO, Myia, Melissa and Robin.
"Melissa has one foot in cedar and another in bamboo. On her father’s side, she comes from the West Family from the ‘Namgis First Nation with roots in the Nimpkish Valley. On her mother’s side, she is Chinese and comes from the Lowe Family. Her relations trace back to Canton and Guangdong, China.
With a love for centering work around Indigenous Food Sovereignty and Land-based Education, Melissa facilitates educational and research needs related to Indigenous food security while increasing knowledge of and access to traditional plants and foods. Her work is rooted in facilitating educational experiences that centers on supporting self-determining and sustainable communities in the revitalization through a reconnection with the land.
As an Indigenous-Mixed-roots Womxn, with the gift to walk multiple worlds, Melissa is passionate in facilitating conversations and opportunities for both communities she is from to gather together, learn more about each other and to create spaces for bridges of solidarities to form between all cultures and communities.
Exploring her mixed roots identity is also at the heart of Melissa’s artistic manifestations and Melissa is driven by a community-led approach and whatever work she is involved in is done so in a collaborative process.
So with visions dreamed into the world by IWO Founder, Myia Antonte, together Melissa with her life partner, Robin Beyers, brewed together the IWO logo.
Robin with roots in Belgium spent much of his childhood exploring and learning how to care for and nurture our interconnected relationship with Mother Earth. He spends his days deepening his understanding of soil and working in communities to create healthy soils that are a solution for many of the ecological challenges such as climate change, biodiversity, pollution, water and food security that communities face around the world.
With Robin’s graphic skills, he was able to facilitate the digital process of the creation of the logo that was manifested from a deeply rooted love that Melissa witnessed Myia having for IWO.
Melissa wanted to create a logo that represented areas in Myia’s life that she holds close to her heart and how that collection of love weaved together brewed to reality the non-profit organization, IWO.
With a shared connection with Myia on how our understanding of our identities as Individuals, Communities, and Nations are tied with our connection and relationship with the Land, Melissa wanted to incorporate a design that embodied her West-Coast Roots to help facilitate a visual understanding of this deeply rooted connection to place, love and exploration of identity.
The mountain ranges in the logo are inspired by some of the places that Myia shared with Melissa that are sacred to the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw.
The moon phases represent the various cycles that womxn go through in life and the sacred connection and power that comes from the shedding, reflecting and gathering processes that life brings.
The design of the stars in the sky are to pay tribute to Myia’s Ukrainian roots on her Mother’s side and the matriarchal energies that guide many communities.
The embodied water in the logo represents how as Relations of Mother Earth, we are all connected together and water symbolizes this bonding connection.
Lastly, the womxn in the mountains represents how our understanding of ourselves cannot be separate from our connection and understanding to the land and how we all have a responsibility to the places that we are in.
The left-aligned heart in the womxn in the mountain is a reminder to all womxn that no matter where you are in your journeys of life, to remember to be gentle with yourself and to remember to love yourself along your journeys of life.
Like the intergenerational Indigenous womxn that will be gathering together through IWO, you are not alone. You have the strength of all the journeys of the Indigenous womxns around you. Moon bathe in the sacred water that the matriarchal energies of the stars have illuminated and be guided by your heart and explore the deepest areas of yourself in a community that is weaved together by the heartbeat of Mother Earth.
Together, Melissa and Robin are on a lifelong journey to deepen and share in their life-long journey in learning the language of our plant and soil relations and together they look forward to the opportunities to work, learn, and grow with Relations they meet along the way.
You can check out more of Melissa’s work here: @ancestral.flo "