Head to the Skirball for a day-long, intergenerational celebration of Indigenous and Jewish languages and cultures featuring insightful panel discussions, activities and games, and poetry, music, and performance.

While you’re here, be sure to explore the exhibition On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues, featuring forty-six portraits of speakers and students of endangered languages who are living in the US today.

Family Art Studio

• Chachaanke': A Traditional Tongva Game
  All day
  Decorate game pieces, learn how to play, and learn a song in the Tongva language.

Museum Terrace

• Unearth and Explore: Soapstone Amulets
  11:30 am and 1:30 pm
  Teaching artist Lazaro Arvizu will discuss and display steatite stonework of the Gabrielino/Tongva people during a lesson on Native California lifeways. Then, carve and decorate a soapstone amulet that you can wear home.

Magnin Auditorium

Panel discussions

• A conversation with artist B.A. Van Sise, scholar Ilan Stavans, activist Virginia Carmelo, and Professor Sarah Bunin Benor
  12:30–1:30 pm

• Verses of Fire: Language and poetry as a mechanism of identity and survival
  2:00–3:00 pm
  Preserving Indigenous languages and Jewish languages through poetry.

  Original sources for poetry are from Cherokee, Ladino, Mojave, Muskogee, Nahuatl, and Yiddish languages.

• Pochoville: Musings by columnist Gustavo Arellano and scholar Ilan Stavans
  4:30–5:30 pm
  Explore how language is an instrument of survival—no language is static, it transforms through immigration and over generations. Why do languages disappear or transform?

Taper Courtyard

• N8tive Hoop
  3:00–3:45 pm
  World champion hoop dancer Terry L. Goedel and his family bring Yakama and Tulalip stories to life through the art, sport, and ceremony of hoop dance. N8tive Hoop showcases the rich traditions of Indigenous peoples during this exciting multigenerational performance. Plus, learn more about community organizations that help support Indigenous communities as well as endangered languages.
   
• Taste Traditional Mesoamerican Flavors
  3:45–4:30 pm
  Enjoy a food sample provided by culinary anthropologist Dr. Claudia Serrato featuring Indigenous ingredients, then take the recipe with you to make at home.

B.A. Van Sise is a photographic artist and linguist focused on the intersection between language and visual arts. Van Sise’s artwork has been featured in exhibitions at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ; Woody Guthrie Center, Tulsa, OK; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Los Angeles Center of Photography; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His short nonfiction and poetry have appeared in such publications as Poets & Writers, Rattle, the North American Review, and the Los Angeles Review. He is fluent or conversational in English, Ladino, Italian, French, German, and Russian.

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books.

Virginia Carmelo (Gabrieliño/Tongva) has dedicated her life to Indigenous activism, with a focus on the preservation and revitalization of Tongva tribal song, dance, language, story, and regalia. Virginia served over a decade as a Tribal Council Member and Tribal Chairperson of the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation of the Los Angeles Basin. 

Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at HUC-JIR (LA) and Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. Her books include Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press, 2020). Dr. Benor is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and directs the HUC-JIR Jewish Language Project, which features the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon.

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond. He previously worked at OC Weekly, where he was an investigative reporter for fifteen years and editor for six, wrote a column called ¡Ask a Mexican!, and is the author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.” He’s the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.

Lazaro Arvizu, Jr. is an artist, educator, and musician. Born and raised in the Los Angeles basin, he is knowledgeable of the landscape and history of the first people. Lazaro has worked for over twenty years facilitating creative and meaningful learning experiences to people of all ages and walks of life in many venues.