For fun, for good, forever

Orcas Pride was jump-started in 2019 after a conversation between friends about how the island has never had an “official” Pride gathering. On June 23, seventeen days after that conversation, Orcas celebrated its very first community Pride at The Village Green. There were booths from community organizations, live performances, face painting, dress-up and resources for queer education by the Orcas Island High School Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA). The event showed us Orcas is eager to support and integrate its growing queer community. Of course, the LGBTQIA+ community on the island has been gathering for years. Through Pride, inter-generational relationships were developed with the social group Out on Orcas: a community of people who have been gathering for LGTBQIA+ potlucks and events.

It has been the intention of the Orcas Pride collective to strengthen these relationships and foster opportunities for connection and celebration between cultures and generations. After June 2019, a handful of us continued planning monthly queer events at the Barnacle, with the support of the LGBTQ+ fund and our friends from Out on Orcas. We brought drag performers to the island, hosted trivia and poetry nights, had large community conversations, dove into anti-racist work and supported the Orcas chapter of SURJ, conducted surveys and hosted themed parties until the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our last monthly event was a virtual poetry reading in April of 2020. This event remains a favorite to date.

In 2021, as the rate of infection declined, and the rate of vaccinations and knowledge of community safety increased, we gathered once again. The Cowboy Discotheque in October of 2021 was our first ticketed community event and was an incredible success, indicating once again that safe spaces for queer expression are needed and welcomed on our island.

We shifted our attention to Pride 2022, and cooked up the biggest celebration yet. Pride 2022 ballooned into five events spanning four days: a pizza pop-up at MONTi, Field Day on the village green with Seattle-based slam poet Ebo Barton, two feature films and a wildly lit, sold out drag and burlesque show.

In 2023, the Orcas Island Pride Protest/Fest moves to the Orcas Island Grange. The event featured a refreshed Day Fest which remains steadfast in focus on local LGBTQIA+ youth, and for the first time included free services for all, including but not limited to haircuts, massage, acupuncture, tarot readings, medical screenings and dance healing. - attended by over 300 people! Night Fest was also revamped for our new stage, bringing back old performers and debuting “Slay School”: a way to highlight local performers. The sold-out event hosted over 500 people over two nights!

Orcas Pride also filed its Articles of Incorporation to begin the journey of becoming a WA State Nonprofit - which was achieved in May 2024!

For us, Pride is alchemy. It's power, taking back your power, empowering. It's social action, mutual aid, community organizing. It's a cultural exchange, it's a protest. It is the centering and safekeeping of personal expression. Pride is queer, and to us, queerness is — among its infinite nature — a tool for questioning consensus. It's a moment where you get to say, does that feel right for me? Is that my truth? If not, what is? Pride is the power in practicing this together.