Darcy Ottey

Darcy Ottey (she/her) is a cultural practitioner, facilitator, and network builder. She is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Youth Passageways, an intergenerational and cross-cultural network supporting the regeneration of healthy passages into mature adulthood for today’s youth. A queer, white, able-bodied woman in her 40’s from a mixed middle/working class background, rites of passage have been part of Darcy’s life since her coming of age journey when she was 13.

The descendant of Quaker settlers, British coal miners, and Ukrainian peasants, Darcy’s early encounters with nature and ceremony instilled a deep sense of belonging and connection with the more-than-human world. Her formal and informal education brought understanding of the colonized and colonizing contexts of these experiences. Her work focuses on synthesizing these experiences by helping to dismantle cultural practices that harm while building a world where all people have access to cultural practices that heal

Darcy is grateful for her teachers and mentors. She loves dancing (especially under the full moon), learning to make Slavic folks dolls, and preserving food and plant medicines. She (sometimes) makes her home along the Methow River in Okanogan County, Washington, the territory of the Mətxʷú people and the many beings that survive and thrive throughout the watershed.

Darcy holds herself in accountability to her ancestors, the circles of leadership and partnership comprising Youth Passageways, and the beings of the Methow River watershed.