RISE – RESIST – RECLAIM
RIZE is a platform committed to reclaiming narrative power. We center the voices, stories, and creative expression of communities of color and culture that have experienced the targeted violence of colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and cis-heteropatriarchy.
We believe art is a tool for resistance, healing, and transformation. It holds memory, honors ancestors, heals wounds, and imagines futures beyond oppression. We challenge dominant narratives and uplift the cultural creators reshaping our world with a decolonial lens.
RIZE exists to uplift the work of creators of culture and color whose perspectives are often stolen, tokenized, or erased by dominant media. We challenge extractive storytelling and refuse the co-optation of culture by institutions that were never built for us.
Instead, we build with and for each other: rooted in truth, accountability, and collective care. Representation is not enough. We’re working to reclaim space, redistribute power, and dismantle the structures that profit from our stories while silencing our voices.
RIZE is where stories return to their rightful keepers.
RIZE Entertainment is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. All contributions to our organization are tax-deductible.
RIZE acknowledges that we operate on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish people past and present, and honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish people.
Luna Reyna (she/they) is a multi-award-winning journalist, experienced editor and artist. Over the last decade she has shaped ambitious journalism across arts, culture, politics, Indigenous affairs, immigration, environmental justice, criminal justice, housing, and more. Luna is of Little Shell Chippewa, Mexican and settler descent and is passionate about storytelling that centers the voices, stories, and creative expression of communities of color and culture.
Throughout her career in media she experienced many instances of tokenization, underpayment, outright discrimination, and theft of her ideas by organizations, and collectives that center whiteness and empathize with white fragility. She experienced the ramifications of speaking her truth as a queer woman of color, being welcomed with open arms when her ideas, experiences and honesty were useful to them, only to have that experience vilified or minimized in the next breath when it no longer benefited them.
This is why RIZE was founded. Luna understood that she is far from alone in these types of experiences and wanted to create a media organization run by, and for people of color and culture. Somewhere stories are returned to their rightful keepers. Through RIZE, she hopes to disrupt the white gatekeeping that often dominates the arts by bringing more diverse voices, perspectives, and experience to the forefront, allowing people of color and culture to reclaim and tell their own stories.
Vee Hua 華婷婷 (they/them) is a writer, filmmaker, and artist who splits their time between Oaxaca, Mexico, and Seattle, Washington. Much of their work unifies their metaphysical interests with their belief that art can positively transform the self and society. They are the Editor-in-Chief of REDEFINE magazine, the Interim Managing Editor at International Examiner, and an Environmental Justice reporter at the South Seattle Emerald. Prior to that, they were the Executive Director of the interdisciplinary community hub, Northwest Film Forum, where they played a groundbreaking role in making the space more welcoming and accessible for diverse audiences.
Their latest short film, Reckless Spirits (2022), is a metaphysical, multi-lingual POC buddy comedy; the feature film version is slated for production in early 2026. Vee is also in post-production on a short documentary film about Hunt’s Trading Post in Southern Utah, just outside of the Navajo and Ute Nations.
In 2017, Vee released the narrative short film, Searching Skies — which touches on Syrian refugee resettlement in the United States — and co-organized The Seventh Art Stand, a national film and civil rights discussion series against Islamophobia.
Vee is passionate about cultural space, the environment, and finding ways to covertly and overtly disrupt oppressive structures. They also regularly share observational human stories through their storytelling newsletter, RAMBLIN’ WITH VEE!. They have a Master’s in Tribal Resource and Environmental Stewardship under the Native American Studies Department at the University of Minnesota and are pursuing a certificate in Incidencias en Problemas Socioambientales at the Universidad del Medio Ambiente in Mexico.
