Reclaiming And Decolonizing Storytelling With Gelaine Santiago
Did you struggle as a teen to fit in with white majority groups, abandoning your cultural identity and heritage in the process?
Many of us feel a heavy sense of shame for trying to blend in as youth. So much so that we now guilt ourselves as we grow into understanding the importance of our incredible ancestral stories.
For too long, we have masked our culture and our rich roots so we could just fit in. Now, we need to reclaim our space and our stories, and challenge existing dynamics of power when choosing where to invest our hard earned dollars.
As activists, entrepreneurs, storytellers, and magical humans (our decolonized term for addressing people of color), we MUST change this mainstream way of being and consuming. We must hone in on how to support each other in our communities, ventures, art, and marketing by centering us (yes, US!) instead of subconsciously supporting white supremacy.
In this episode, Jazz chats with friend and social entrepreneur Gelaine Santiago about reclaiming your cultural identity after years of hiding it, and how we’re working to honor and celebrate our cultures within our communities.
“Diversity is not the same thing as representation.” - Gelaine Santiago
Did you struggle as a teen to fit in with white majority groups, abandoning your cultural identity and heritage in the process?
Many of us feel a heavy sense of shame for trying to blend in as youth. So much so that we now guilt ourselves as we grow into understanding the importance of our incredible ancestral stories.
For too long, we have masked our culture and our rich roots so we could just fit in. Now, we need to reclaim our space and our stories, and challenge existing dynamics of power when choosing where to invest our hard earned dollars.
As activists, entrepreneurs, storytellers, and magical humans (our decolonized term for addressing people of color), we MUST change this mainstream way of being and consuming. We must hone in on how to support each other in our communities, ventures, art, and marketing by centering us (yes, US!) instead of subconsciously supporting white supremacy.
In this episode, Jazz chats with friend and social entrepreneur Gelaine Santiago about reclaiming your cultural identity after years of hiding it, and how we’re working to honor and celebrate our cultures within our communities.
Gelaine is a writer, online storyteller, and social entrepreneur. She empowers BIPOC founders to scale their e-commerce businesses with decolonized marketing, smart content strategies, and authentic storytelling.
Gelaine is a proud woman of colour, Filipina, and immigrant. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Cambio & Co., an ethical fashion company that provides sustainable livelihood for artisans in the Philippines and empowers Filipinos in the diaspora to #WearYourHeritage. She’s also the CEO of Sinta & Co., a boutique for socially conscious Filipino weddings.
Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan Magazine, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, CBC, Rappler, Metro Style and ABS-CBN. Gelaine was also a recipient of the RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award in 2019.
In this episode, Gelaine and Jazz dive into:
- The intersection between cultural identity, honoring your heritage, and navigating entrepreneurship in the Western world.
- How you can be a leader for putting money back into communities of color.
- How to identify cultural appropriation in marketing and storytelling.
Connect with Gelaine at gelainesantiago.com and on Instagram and Twitter. And of course, support Filipino artisans and embrace the beauty of Filipino culture at shopcambio.co and shopsinta.co.
Continue the conversation with us on the Conscious Bad Asses Facebook group and follow along at @curatedconsciously.
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