Tianna Renee Arredondo (they/them) is a Black-Mexican thought liberator moved by modes of ancestral technologies most familiarized as healing justice and/or self-healing. They grew up between Ohlone and Yokut Territory between Santa Cruz and Fresno, California experiencing the juxtaposition in climate, culture, and class from a young age. Tianna comes from many bloodlines of activists, artists, and healers of Chicanx and Black ancestry. Their father and mother were equally involved in leading others in their free time under their parents leadership Tianna attended their first protests and supported their mothers union as young as six and supported her mother in court holding company executives responsible for her father’s death due to radioactive externalities at age ten. Tianna was raised by a strong Chicana Great Grandmother who taught them to tend to land and love with grace as a caregiver and relative. Tianna has spent the last few years exploring their relations as a child of the water to reconnect to their soul purpose, joining the collective of dedicated earth protectors and healers here to serve the collective wellness of our people.
Tianna has supported environmental justice organizing at the local, statewide, national, and international level with leaders from many backgrounds. Their soul calling is to create media and spaces that are transformative, allowing melanated folx to self-actualize and heal while in nourishing community. This soul journey has led to the co-founding the Frontlines to Power (F2P) initiative with Eddie Junsay through Power Shift Network. F2P works to build a national coalition of environmental justice leaders dedicated to using story-based strategy, incorporating anti-oppression tactics, and practicing decolonization in daily interactions within their roles of leadership so that we can hold one another accountable in love as we best embody the change we have visions for. Tianna’s contribution to the collective body of work has focused on creating curriculum, strategic planning, facilitating, and hosting 1:1 care sessions that offers presence for healing and transformation.
Tianna’s leadership journey began in the liminal spaces between spirituality, athletics, and art. Tianna was a leader within in Christianity as a worship leader, youth leader, and community service leader. After attending a seminary – like program intellectualizing the impacts of colonization, racism, and gender moved Tianna to separated from all they new and began practicing vulnerability, studying symbols/biomimicry, and opening to silence as a means to understand how to embody love in the world. Tianna’s embodiment of truth has been informed of the wisdom of their family who have nourished the land, their experiences as a caregiver and community leader, and professional roles within higher education, technology, and healthcare industries. Tianna has a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism and Public Health Science from California State University, Fresno.
Tianna is a singer, poet, and writer working on many passion projects that flow together to offer context and support for deep feeling and self-reflecting. Their most current role is as an environmental justice organizer for 350.org organizing in Hawaii and California to support local leaders in their leadership while creating structures and processes of accountability within the NPIC in hopes of being able to create a black and brown, indigenous led climate justice narrative within spaces that are known for extracting and disrespecting QTBIPOC leaders.
