Darcy Ottey

Darcy Ottey (she/her) is a cultural practitioner, facilitator, network builder, and 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, Darcy’s work focuses on: supporting white people and others with privilege in dismantling systems of oppression internally and externally; building resilient networks of relationships across lines of difference; and building community capacity for meaningful acts of redistribution, reparations, and rematriation with People of the Global Majority.

Rites of Passage have been part of Darcy’s life since her coming of age journey when she was 13. The descendant of early Quaker settlers, British coal miners, and Ukrainian peasants, her early encounters with nature and ceremony instilled in her 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. Synthesizing these realities is the core of Darcy’s work, from guiding multi-day wilderness excursions for youth to teaching courses and workshops in person and online.

Darcy holds an M.A. in Environment and Community from Antioch University Seattle, is a certified 200-hour yoga teacher, and is a certifiedSomaSource Practitioner. She is grateful for her teachers and mentors, including Stan Crow, Gigi Coyle, Melissa Michaels, Sharon Blackwolf, Orland Bishop, Rebecca Chief Eagle, Elder Paul Hill, and her amazing mom, Edith Kusnic. She holds herself in accountability to to her ancestors, the intergenerational circles of leadership and partnership comprising Youth Passageways, and the many beings that survive and thrive throughout the Methow Valley watershed. 

Darcy loves dancing (especially under the full moon), learning to make Slavic folks dolls, and preserving food and plant medicines. She makes her home along the Methow River in Okanogan County, Washington, the stolen land of the Mətxʷú people. Rites and Responsibilities: A Guide to Growing Up is her first book.

Here is her tedx talk on rites of passage from 2017.