OutSpokane's Voices of Victory spotlights the history of our community's struggle for equality, annually featuring a different individual, advocate or artist whose work has advanced GLBT civil rights. The Institute consists of youth and community-wide forums, plus an evening meet-and-greet session with the year's specially chosen honoree, who also usually serves as the Pride Parade's Grand Marshal.

We established the Heritage Pride Institute in 2006 in response to a LGBT community request for more information about movement landmarks and leaders. In 2010 we renamed the Institue to Voices of Victory in an effort to reimagine what pride looks like today, highlight the successes of the LGBTQA rights movement, and share a vision for the future. We understand how important it is to recognize our heroes — and to educate our LGBTQA youth, and remind ourselves, of their legacy. It's hard to forge a path forward if we don't know how we got where we are. The rights many of us now take for granted were won with the blood, sweat and tears of many brave pioneers.

2010 Honoree

2010's Honoree Barb WIilliamson

Barbara Williamson was born on the plains of Nebraska, but she didn’t stay there long, as her father was in the Navy.  Nebraska?  Navy? Don’t ask.  In any case, she moved around a lot, mostly throughout the west coast, which became her home.  

By the age of 12—for a variety of reasons, not least among them a dawning realization of her own sexuality—she had started a life of misadventure, becoming addicted to drugs and eventually dropping out of high school and running away from home.  

At 18, finding herself a drug addicted, pregnant high school dropout in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she decided to move back home, go back to school, and get her high school diploma.  

Two years later, toddler in hand, Barbara became a proud community college graduate, having received an A.A. degree from Western Nevada Community College. After that, having caught the education bug, she earned a B.A. and an M.A. in English at the University of Nevada, where she began her teaching career.  Teaching at the same community college from which she graduated, she realized her calling--to help students who were fighting for their educations—and she recognized that community colleges were the places that were doing that work.  

After teaching for a couple of years and wanting to finish her own educational journey as a model for her students, she went back to her Midwestern roots to the University of Nebraska where she earned a Ph.D. in English with emphasis in Popular Culture, specifically film (she’s a fool for really bad Hollywood action movies), women's literature, and 20th century American and Canadian literatures.

After teaching at UNL, she recommitted herself to teaching at a community college, and she knew she wanted to return to the west; thus she arrived here in Spokane with her family in the fall of 1998.  She currently teaches literature, writing, cultural studies, and film at Spokane Falls Community College.  

As part of her commitment to work on behalf of our community, she is co-advisor of The Alliance, the LBGTQ club at SFCC, one of the most active and dynamic clubs on campus and host of Night of Illusions, a fundraiser for the club and a run-away hit Pride event.  She also co-leads the Spokane Falls Safe Zone training program, a program designed to educate SFCC faculty and staff about issues surrounding sexuality and gender identity and how to be an ally to marginalized students.  She regularly tells her homeless-to-Ph.D. story to classes and community groups, speaking on issues surrounding coming out, LGBT rights, and sexuality and gender identity.  

She believes that teaching at a community college is an act of revolution and that her students are incredibly brave and intelligent and will someday take over the world.  In her spare time, you’ll find her working to make the world a better place (tilting at windmills though that may be) or relaxing in a darkened movie theater.  Wherever she’s at, however, she’s sure to have her head buried in a book; in fact, she may be the only lesbian in history who has been known to take a book into a bar with her on a Friday night, a source of endless amusement to her friends and family.  Yeah, she’s that kind of woman.  

She says she is very grateful to be surrounded by the strength and love of strong women, including the daughter who saved her life at 18, Ashley, and Ashley’s partner Eglantine, and her two daughters-of-the-heart, Amanda and Jackson, as well as her wonderful girlfriend, who has brought laughter storming back into her life.  She’ll be speaking at Voices of Victory on Friday, June 11, blah blah pm, at blah blah blah.  The title of her talk is “Queer Literary Images:  Reading Homophobia Subversively or Just Wishful Thinking?”

2010's Honoree Nova Kaine

Jason Johnson was born in Douglas, WY in 1968. He lived in Germany until the age of 7. Returned to the United States and grew up on the family cattle ranch in rural, central Wyoming. He was active in the FFA, and lettered in Rodeo, Swimming, Track, and Drama. He attended the Univ. of Wyoming on an Agricultural scholarship receiving a Masters in Theater Arts. Then attended the Univ. of St. Chad in Saskatoon, Canada and received a Masters of Divinity looking to become an Episcopalian priest. He quite literally fell into the field of Broadcast Journalism in High School and worked in the radio industry for 20 years in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. He married at the age of 21 and has three beautiful children, two daughters ages 20, and 16. As well as an 18 year old son. He currently lives in Spokane, WA.

Nova Kaine sprang into the limelight in New York City, NY. In the 1960's. She has impersonated such greats as Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, Elaine Stritch, Carol Channing, and many more. Through her six carnations, she has graced stages and Cabarets in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Salt Lake, Las Vegas, Spokane, and Portland. Over the course of 40 years she has slowly made her way across the country hoping to someday make the pilgrimage to Gay Mecca - San Francisco spreading the name and the love all the way across the nation.

Past Heritage Pride Institute Honorees

In 2006, Internationally acclaimed author Patricia Nell Warren, whose 1974 novel The Front Runner challenged the mores of our nation regarding same-sex orientation, was the Heritage Pride Institute's first honoree.

In 2007, we were pleased to host Grethe Cammermeyer, the highest-ranking officer in the United States armed forces to acknowledge her homosexuality while still in the service. She successfully challenged the military's policy banning homosexuals prior to the implementation of what's now commonly called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

In 2008, we were able to bring two-spirit Steven Barrios (Long Time Holy Rain), a Native American community activist and HIV/AIDS educator who lives on the Blackfeet reservation in Browning, Montana.

In 2009, Marcia Botzer, a founding member of Equal Rights Washington - the organization that would help ensure the rights of LGBT citizens remained protected by Washington's expanded Domestic Partnership Law in 2009, spoke on her experiences as a community leader and visionary.