Shilo George
Image description: Fabulous fat indigenous person wearing a sparkly dress and fur, with red cat-eye sunglasses and long hair stands in front of a painting of buffalo.
Shilo George is a disabled artist, culture bearer, and justice producer.
Shilo—who identifies as mixed-race Indigenous, queer, and a person of size—is a social worker with more than twenty years of experience and a master’s degree in adult learning and education from Portland State University. With values rooted in Native cultural and spiritual practices, Shilo praises her communities as the sources of her inspiration, resiliency, and drive.
While seeking her graduate degree, Shilo found herself confronted with depression and in a state of despair, as though she had fallen in a “deep dark hole.” She couldn’t find her way out—therapy, medication, nothing seemed to help. In this time of desperation, she called on her ancestors for help. They answered, encouraging the use of her creative skills to build a way out of the darkness. From this her healing framework, the Body Sovereignty Project, was born.
Drawing from her experiences as a survivor of abuse, Shilo created the Body Sovereignty Project as a trauma-informed framework that focuses on healing relationships with food, being in-body for movement, and healing around sexual trauma. Realizing the positive impact the Body Sovereignty Project could have in her communities, Shilo sought opportunities to share the framework and increase the availability of equitable health care for deviant body types.
My Instagram is @shilogeorge