Solano Solutions is the professional home of Sophia Solano’s private practice. For more than ten years Sophia has served the public through a variety of roles, primarily within the field of restorative justice. She has had the privilege of learning from many influential teachers, mentors, and colleagues from a wide range of lineages and disciplines. Her passion for community care and cultural stewardship have nurtured dreams of a more just future, allowing for an evolving practice of relational service, cross-sector collaboration and innovation.
about sophia
I am an artist, activist and community organizer currently living, dancing and dreaming between the salty waters, big trees and mountains of the Cascadia bioregon. My mother, Dr. Bernadette Florence Kelly was born in England to an English mother and Irish father. My father, impresario José Eugenio Solano y Carrasquillo was born in Manhattan to parents from Borikén (Puerto Rico). I was born and raised in Oregon and am a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom; I carry the legacy and bloodlines of colonized peoples and their colonizers through both lineages. All of my life, art and work is an evolving practice of transmuting and transforming this tension. As a philosopher, I am constantly questioning imposed and assumed realities, ideologies and theories of knowledge to ground my theoretical perspectives in decolonial praxis. My multicultural heritage has informed a multidisciplinary art practice and my projects regularly explore the intersections of tradition and revolution, simplicity and power, the new and the ancient.
Most of my life I have resided on and benefited from the stolen lands of Indigenous peoples whose descendants now belong to the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Much of what informs my life, ethics, relationships, and restorative justice practice has been learned from Native people, friends and colleagues. The coastal lands and waters that raised me have been stewarded and cared for since time immemorial by Indigenous communities to whom we owe our gratitude and our lives.