Getting to Know Our Streets: Daylong Bearing Witness Retreat
Saturday, March 1 • 9:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m. PST • In-Person Only
Stewarded by Sensei Jitsujo Gauthier, John Kyogen Rosania & Joe Parker
“Indian Alley in Los Angeles’s Skid Row has played a sad, even tragic, role in the lives of many Natives who relocated there in the 1950s and ‘60s. But the area’s reputation as the seedy underbelly of the city has gone on far longer than that. After more than 125 years, the area now known as Indian Alley is finally experiencing a shift, starting at 118 Winston Street, where murals by well-known Native artists call out for remembrance, healing, and strength.”
Register using the form below.
EVENT INFO
Join us for a day to explore how the street affects us and how we affect the streets. Together, we will walk, listen, bear witness, eat, do council, and offer the Gate of Sweet Nectar ritual. We will have the special opportunity to hear from Tongva Cultural Collective Member Virginia Carmelo about the history of this place and her embodied wisdom. Participants will have the opportunity to gently stretch their ‘window of tolerance’ around hesitations, fears, feelings, and resistance to engaging with life – past, present, & future – on the streets!
A group of us will walk from ZCLA to what is known as Skid Row’s Indian Alley, known to historians and tribal members as a place where Indians/Indigenous people were sold into slavery. Others may meet us at the Creative Justice Center at 12:00PM. Please pack yourself a bagged lunch and bring a folding chair or towel to sit on.
DEADLINE TO REGISTER: Friday, February 28
SCHEDULE
(Tentative, subject to change based on causes and conditions)
9:30 a.m. Gather
10:00 Walk Downtown
12:00 p.m. Meet at Creative Justice Center
12:15 Intention setting
12:30 Peace Walk around Skid Row’s Indian Alley to City Hall Park
2:00 Council (at City Hall Park)
3:30 Prepare/beg/gather things for Gate of Sweet Nectar ritual
4:00 Gate of Sweet Nectar
4:45 Speaker on Indian Alley’s history followed by Q&A
6:00 p.m. End (return to ZCLA/Home)
EVENT STEWARDS
Sensei Jitsujo T. Gauthier is a Zen priest, preceptor and Dharma Holder at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, as well as a member of the Zen Peacemakers International. She received Dharma Transmission (denbo) from Roshi Egyoku in 2024. She is also an Assistant Professor and current Chair of the Buddhist Chaplaincy department at University of the West in Los Angeles County. She explores and practices of the Three Tenets in the classroom, chaplaincy work, as well as within seated meditation.
John Kyogen Rosania is a zen priest and ZCLA Board member. He was the 2023-2024 Shuso (Head Trainee) under the guidance of Head Teacher, Sensei Katherine Daiki Senshin Griffith, and has been a residential student at ZCLA since 2015. He works as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst-in-training in community mental health and in private practice.
Joe Parker is an uninvited settler of European ancestry and has collaborated with the Tongva and other Indigenous communities in the Los Angeles area for fifteen years. He has experience leading workshops in anti-racist and decolonial practices, California native plant uses, and in Indigenous allyship skills. He retired in 2020 from a career teaching and publishing in Intercultural Studies at Pitzer College.
QUESTIONS
Contact: Sensei Jitsujo Gautier – jitsujo8@gmail.com or Kyogen Rosania – kyogen@jrosania.com.
REGISTER HERE