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Elise Paschen is a member of the Osage Nation, located mostly in Oklahoma.

The Osage Nation, a Native American tribe hailing from the Great Plains in the Midwest, originated in the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers circa 700 BC, alongside other linguistic kin. Their westward journey commenced in the 17th century, prompted by the Iroquois' encroachment into the Ohio Valley, as they sought fresh hunting territories. Eventually, the Osage settled in proximity to where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers merge.

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San Francisquito, formerly known as San Francisco Pápagos, is a town in the northernmost region of the Mexican state of Sonora. It stands as one of the key communities of the Tohono O'odham people in Mexico and serves as the seat of their governor. San Francisquito is situated within the municipality of Caborca.

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The Sonora state is one of the places where the O'odham language is spoken. The ancestral territories of the Tohono Oʼodham once extended across a significant portion of present-day southern Arizona and northern Mexico, encompassing most of the Sonoran Desert. To the south, their lands bordered with those inhabited by the Seris and Opata communities. Ofelia Zepeda has written a O'odham grammar and, as it is said in the Poetry Foundation's web: "Zepeda’s poetry touches on linguistics, O’odham traditions, the natural world, and the experience of contemporary O’odham life".

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Ofelia Zepeda was born in Arizona. What is more, Zepeda holds the esteemed position of Regents' Professor, specializing in the Tohono O'odham language and linguistics, while also serving as the Director of the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) within The University of Arizona. She also assumes the role of editor for Sun Tracks, a collection of publications spotlighting the creative endeavors of Native American artists and writers. These works are published by the University of Arizona Press.

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Chicaco is the place where Elise Paschen was born and raised. Besides, it is where she lives nowadays: "Paschen lives with her family in Chicago where she teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago" (font: Poetry Foundation).

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Oxford University, Broad Street, Oxford, Reino Unido

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Oxford University, Broad Street, Oxford, Reino Unido

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Oxford University, Broad Street, Oxford, Reino Unido

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Following her academic journey, Elise Paschen pursued a doctoral degree in 20th-century British and American Literature at Oxford University, focusing her dissertation on the manuscripts of the renowned poet William Butler Yeats. Concurrently, during her tenure at Oxford, she took on the role of co-editor for Oxford Poetry.

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This is where I am today.

To be here right now feels crazy because I would have never imagined that I would wind up studying for four months in the United States. It also feels like a culmination of years of wondering how is life out there (not talking about space, but another continent). I chose the United States because Europe and the world itself are so influentiated by this country that I have always wanted to experience it from the inside.

The experience of living abroad is nourishing me and making me thrive as a person since I'm learning to live by myself as an independent human being. I have to deal with loneliness and homesickness, of course, but I see it as parts of the process of becoming the version of me who is at peace with himself and with this crazy world.

Being surrounded by these majestic woods and mountains really helps me to connect with nature and with my real self (which I think I have lost track of so many times as a consequence of the rythm of our society). So I try to do my best everyday bearing in mind the people that I love and that are so far from me in order to become someone better.

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That's me in June 2023 reading a manifesto during LGBITQ+ Pride in Novelda. The people behind me are the major of Novelda and the city councillors.

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I grew up in a small town in the south-east of Spain called Novelda. There I developed as a human being and I discovered what family, friendship and love meant.

What is more, I also realized that I wanted to make an impact there so that is why I became the president of the Youth Council (Consejo de la Juventud in Spanish or Consell de la Joventut in Catalan) in 2020 so I could stand up for the rights of Novelda's young people.

As a member of the LGBTIQ+ community, I grew up feeling free because my parents allowed me to be the way I was and never made me ill-at-ease because who I was. That freedom, coupled with my activism for youth rights, made me establish the first LGBTIQ+ association of Novelda. So, since 2020, I have been working and organizing activities, demonstrations and festivals to stand up for LGBTIQ+ rights in my hometown. It has been hard since Novelda is a small town where there are lot of narrow-minded people (mostly elder people). However, with the help of my friends I have been able to improve the situation of this collective. As part of this activism, I got a space in the local TV, TeleNovelda.

I am very proud of my work in television because I got to see how necessary it was to talk about gender, sexuality and freedom in small towns like Novelda. Some people have stopped to me in the street to express their gratitude and that made me realize that I was doing a good job.

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While my mother's family lives almost entirely in Novelda, my father's family resides in a near city (a little bigger than Novelda) called Elda (and also in another two smaller towns that are close to Elda whose names are Petrer and Sax).

I've been going to Elda, Petrer or Sax (depending on if we ate at my grandmother's or my uncle's) to eat with my grandmother, my uncles and my cousins every Saturday since I was 6. Also I studied there French for a year after finishing highschool, between 2020 and 2021 (right after lockdown in Spain).