not past

by Ariel Luckey

I was born and raised into a colonized california
in a city named for oak trees that were quickly cut down
this is the only place I’ve ever lived
the only place I’ve really known
my home

and yet my family’s roots here are paper thin
in this landscape’s living library
we are just a hundred and forty characters
a blink of the eye
relative to Ohlone time

my children
the first in six
generations on every branch of our family tree
to grow up in the same
place as their parents

we are diaspora
we are visitors, settlers, squatters
migrants, refugees, gentrifiers
we forget where we come from or call home to other places
but we live here

this sacred and haunted and broken and gorgeous land
Chochenyo and Lisjan
unceded and unrecognized and unrequited

how can we live here

with death beneath every step
like the bodies still under Bay Street
echoes on the edges of the wind
purple screams of Mission slavery
tattooed on the earth’s skin
pulled taut like a drum
there is still tension
in the shadow of the cross

who are we to live here

we sleep in beds we didn’t make
dreaming of being at home
but we are out of practice
out of balance
out of place
we are hermit crabs at Alameda beach
eucalyptus trees in Tilden
we make our home in someone else’s
living rooms cluttered with ghosts and dirty laundry
we don’t even know what we don’t know

I can only just gesture in the direction of the loss
it’s beyond beyond
a breaking of the imagination
heart failure

and every hipster bar and restaurant
every workshare cafe and high rise condominium
everywhere we go
sits on these tectonic plates
shaken skeletons of social decay
however visible
this blood stain
the past is not past

so how should we live here

what ethics of reconciliation
should shape our footprints
what practice of repair
could possibly come close
our humanity dangling by a thread

how can we pay rent or a mortgage or property taxes to anyone
but the Ohlone

who else can claim this land
with a story unauthored by theft
who else can show us how to live here
in accordance with the canyons and the creeks
informed by the fog and the bay
the protocols and rituals of their elders
who else

what if reverence for the redwoods
was as common as techie entitlement
what if we told our children the truth
what if we stopped using plastic
and ripped up the concrete that suffocates these shellmounds

what if Indigenous women made a circle
and built a sacred arbor
and said
maybe

if you learn how to listen
if you tell your story when invited
if you get your hands dirty and organize your people
if you give Shuumi
and help us rematriate the land

then maybe

one day

we will welcome you

home

JOOL Note: A drash is a teaching about the Torah that usually takes place in a synagogue. We've remixed that practice. In this digital space, JOOL members teach about the Torah of Jewish/Indigenous solidarity work. Individuals offer their perspectives on the questions and ideas that are moving through them. We hope it's a wild and sacred space. By lifting up different points of view, we practice our values of transparency, learning and relationship building. And we celebrate the diversity of our collective, where many different voices are joining together, connected through shared values, to call for Indigenous sovereignty.

This poem was first performed at a community prayer ceremony called Standing On This Land Together at the West Berkeley Shellmound on Interdependence Day, July 4, 2019 at the invitation of Corrina Gould, a Lisjan Ohlone leader and co-founder of Sogorea Té Land Trust.