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, refugees, and settlers 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. He has helped facilitate the return of numerous land sites to Indigenous stewardship, and he is a founding member of the Indigenous Solidarity Funding Coalition, an emerging national network of Indigenous land taxes. 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 as a cartography of race, land justice, 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 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 was a Butler Koshland Arts and Civic Engagement Fellow at ODC Dance, and a Just Economy Institute Fellow, and he is an active member of Tzedek Lab.

Ariel is a storyteller, strategist, and coalition builder. He lives in an urban forest with his beloved and their two sons.