The Unlearning Team

  • Maio Buenafe

    (she/they/siya)

    Visionary, Co-Builder, Oracle-In-Service

    Maio Buenafe is the founder of the Unlearning Community School and is a bilingual immigrant, genderqueer, multi-ethnic Indigenous Filipino who has lived most of her life between the ‘Philippines’ and ‘California’. As a Cultural Strategist, Maio has worked with grassroots community organizations, business owners, and non-profit organizations providing direct services to frontline communities impacted by systemic injustices. Their roles involved administrative coordination, conducting research, reviewing grant applications or proposals, program design and development, and providing technical assistance through facilitating training or workshops within organizations and multi-site initiatives. A former college professor with over 9 years of experience, they have taught Applied Cultural Anthropology, Political Science, Critical Diversity Studies, and Ethnic Studies at various universities and colleges in the US and in the Philippines. As a qualitative researcher and scholar for over 15 years, Maio specializes in decolonial cultural and political education through Indigenous knowledge systems and practices, intergenerational knowledge transfer, & food and water sovereignty. Maio combines her extensive experience as an educator-scholar-researcher with her work as a community organizer, facilitator, and mentor for transitional age youth and diverse community leaders. 

  • Alaia Z

    (she/her)

    Coordinator and Creative Vision Collaborator

    Peace and blessings, and I am grateful to learn/unlearn alongside each other in this community school. A glimpse into me would be transmuter via pen n paper and rider for my pplz worldwide.

    Maio’s vision for liberatory learning has been in practice throughout their existence, long before the official creation of this community school. By the grace of the Most High, I was given the opportunity to begin weaving these practices of unlearning into my life through Maio. They presented one of the most critical opportunities of spiritual harnessing and reckoning that put me on the path I’m on today, Alhamdulillah.

    I grew up in different parts of Ohlone land, most of my youth being spent in a city overlooking Mount Diablo, originally named Tuyshtak, which can be translated to 'dawn of time.' Exploring the valleys, trees, bugs, and peoples who reside on this special part of the earth [yay area] have made me, me. I search for honor and better my relationship with the land and the people we fight alongside/for each and every day. 

  • Mar A

    (any pronouns with good intention)

    Digital Alchemist, Media Specialist, Resident Astrologist

    The big three in Hellenistic are Pisces Sun, Taurus Rising, and a Sagittarius moon—a fish in love with liberation for all. The big three in Vedic are Aquarius Sun, Taurus Rising, and a Scorpio moon. A flirty humanitarian that doesn’t like to share their secrets o͡͡͡╮༼ ʘ̆ ۝ ʘ̆ ༽╭o͡͡͡ . In essence, I’m a comrade and lover second. 

    Originally born on the lands of the Ibaloi (an Indigenous baddie) from the colonized lands of the “Philippines,” Mar was forcibly taken to migrate to Occupied Turtle Island. Reckoning with her status as a settler colonizer on Turtle Island, Mar oscillates between the lands of the Yokuts, Ohlone, Muwekma, Bay Miwok, and Miwok Plains. With abolition at the forefront of their mind, she seeks to decolonize and resist all forms of colonization. Having this value in mind, he found solace and home in the Unlearning Community School. 

    Aside from resisting this hegemon we live in, Mar is also a student who hates whack-ass pedagogies! She hopes that everyone who takes part in the Unlearning Community School can find belonging in this unlearning process to learn how to dream of better futures— and how put it in praxis. 

    A short and vague list of accomplishments in the past years include, but are not limited to: developing and running a civic based art program, facilitating numerous panels, being a keynote panelist for a conference, hosting multiple workshops, and various community events.

    If you’re interested, Mar also co-organizes a leftist community book club! 

    Things I like: my cats, collective liberation, baking, cooking, third world consciousness, hiking, playing chess, hating on cops, swimming, love + work with land, exercise, reading political theory, reading pieces about black radicals, day dreaming, exploring parallel theology, writing poetry, doing graphic design, flirting, brutalist architecture, community organizing, kissing + holding hands, eating, talking about ways to decolonize, and respecting you. 

    Hit Mar’s line if you ever want to do any of the above together!!! 

    (DISCLAIMER: kissing + holding hands are only for a selected sum)