Ariel Luckey
Born and raised in Huchiun/Oakland, California on unceded Lisjan Ohlone land, Ariel Luckey is an interdisciplinary artist and activist. His people are Ashkenazi Jewish, English, Dutch, Scottish, and Irish migrants, settlers and refugees to this continent. Ariel is the Development Director at the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led land trust, where he was part of the team that created the Shuumi Land Tax. Ariel has actively supported an emerging national network of Indigenous land taxes and the return of numerous land sites to Indigenous stewardship. He is also a co-founder of Jews On Ohlone Land, a multigenerational Jewish collective that is learning together how to be good guests on Lisjan land.
Ariel’s solo plays Free Land and Amnesia illustrate his life and family history as a cartography of race, class, land and intergenerational healing. His band Waystation remixed the hip hop klezmer score of Amnesia into their debut album rememory. He has performed at hundreds of theaters, universities, conferences and community centers across the country.
Ariel earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, was the 2016 Butler Koshland Arts and Civic Engagement Fellow, and has been an Artist in Residence at La Peña Cultural Center, the White Privilege Conference, and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley. He is currently a Fellow at the Just Economy Institute.
Ariel is a storyteller, strategist, and coalition builder. He lives in an urban forest with his beloved and their two sons.