Class of 2022

Photo of Jen, a white coded Native, Two-Spirit femme presenting person, with shoulder length brown wavy hair. Jen is wearing a black short-sleeved shirt, black glasses, and an Indigenous made bangle bracelet and beaded medallion that reads 'Crushing Colonialism.' Jen's hands are holding both sides of the medallion and has a tenacious expression on hir face.

Jen Deerinwater

Crushing Colonialism

We are proud to induct Jen Deerinwater into the Susan Daniels Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame.

Jen Deerinwater is a bisexual, Two-Spirit, multiply-disabled, citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and an award-winning journalist and organizer who covers the myriad of issues hir communities face with an intersectional lens. Jen is the founding executive director of Crushing Colonialism and a 2019 New Economies Reporting Project and 2020 Disability Futures fellow.

Jen is a contributor at Truthout and hir work has been featured in a wide range of publications, including several anthologies, such as Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty First Century and the forthcoming Crip Authorship: Disability as Method (NYU Press, Summer 2023). Jen is the co-editor of the anthology Sacred and Subversive and is currently hard at work on hir own book.