For 10,000 years or more, hundreds of generations of Chocheño and Karkin Ohlone people have lived here in the East Bay. Over the last 250 years, they have survived three waves of genocide and colonization and now are working to reclaim their land and culture. What does it mean for us as Jews to live on this land – for a few years or for a lifetime? What can we learn from the ways our histories of genocide are similar, and from our vastly different experiences of continuity of place? Through exploration of our own Jewish text and genealogy, the history of colonization in the Bay Area, and contemporary Ohlone testimony and activism, we’ll explore what we can do to partner with local Indigenous community and deepen our connection to the land we live on.
This event is $5 in advance, and $10 at the door. All proceeds will go to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led community organization that facilitates the return of Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone lands in the San Francisco Bay Area to Indigenous stewardship.
About the Presenters:
Dev Noily comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish family with roots in Eastern Europe and Israel/Palestine. They serve as Senior Rabbi at Kehilla Community Synagogue. Their current projects include Jews On Ohlone Land, growing Jewish participation in the Shu’umi Land Tax to support the Indigenous women-led Sogorea Te Land Trust in the East Bay; and 700 Benches: Queer Talmud for Everyone, a house of study / beit midrash that connects us with our radical Jewish ancestors. Dev was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2009.
Born and raised in Oakland, California, Ariel Luckey is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and organizer who blurs the lines between performance, public ritual and political action. He works for healing, reparations and collective liberation through several community-based initiatives including his solo play Free Land, the annual arts event Thangs Taken: rethinking thanksgiving, and Jews On Ohlone Land. Currently the Director of Operations at Congregation B’nai Tikvah, Ariel loves to play soccer with his sons and derives great pleasure from dancing, dark chocolate and California sea otters.
