Land Acknowledgement

At Pearlstone, we strive to live in balance and harmony with all life. Grounded in principles of caretaking and responsible stewardship, we grow and share healthy food, we go into the wilderness to heal and gain new perspectives; we learn, pray, and engage with our traditions in chorus with the forests and living waters.

Long before we began these practices on this land, this was the sacred home of the Susquehanna and Piscataway peoples. For more than five hundred years, Indigenous communities across the Americas have demonstrated resilience and resistance in the face of violence, colonization, displacement, and genocide- all efforts to separate them from their lands, cultures, and communities.  Too often their history is erased.

Today Indigenous peoples remain at the forefront of the global movement to build a just and sustainable future for our planet and all its inhabitants. We honor the ancestors and living descendants of the Susquehannock and Piscataway peoples, and all indigenous peoples throughout the world.  As we work towards justice, we can and will make mistakes. We will continue to work towards making it right.

Pearlstone is an inclusive Jewish organization anchored in universal values, welcoming people of all backgrounds from across our bioregion, continent, and planet. Jews have experienced exile and persecution, bigotry and violence—and while this painful history helps stir empathy with all Indigenous peoples, Jews are not indigenous to this land and therefore cannot truly understand the unique historical journey and contemporary reality of the Indigenous peoples here.

What Jews—and all people—can do is authentically honor Indigenous peoples who have stewarded this land for thousands of years and express our love for and solidarity with Indigenous peoples, and our commitment to Indigenous rights and justice.  With open ears and open hearts, we walk alongside our Indigenous brothers and sisters on the path ahead.