Eleyna, who is Jewish, talks about growing up in a small town in California where Native Americans and whites went to school together, but lived "in different worlds," as she puts it. She explains, "I knew from a really young age that racism was a huge issue, and that it was affecting my life and the lives of everyone around me." A retreat she attended as a teen enabled her to engage deeply with young people of diverse backgrounds, and provided her with the vocabulary and foundation for her understanding of racism and other oppressions, issues at the core of her work to this day.
Multiple times she expresses her ever-present desire to bridge the divide that racism creates, which she has been able to do with MaryAnn, an African American friend whom she met in her late teens. Their friendship is close, but conflict related to racial dynamics playing out arises occasionally. Still, they continue to be friends, with Eleyna open to confrontation and invested in unlearning her own oppressive "white patters" of behavior.
Listen to Eleyna's story here.
