HARRISBURG, Pa. – The National Park Service’s proposal to remove a William Penn statue from a historic site in Philadelphia –- quickly withdrawn amid a backlash — wasn’t a priority for some of the Native Americans the agency was required to consult with as it prepared to renovate the deteriorating plaza.
Uprooting the statue of Pennsylvania’s founder from Welcome Park also wasn’t a major point of discussion as park service officials and tribal representatives met to plan the renovation over video last year, said Jeremy Johnson, director of cultural education for the Delaware Tribe of Indians.
Rather, what tribal representatives had envisioned for the plaza is an exhibit that would highlight the culture, history, traditions and perceptions of the Native Americans who had lived there for thousands of years before Penn arrived, Johnson said.
“We do still speak highly of William Penn,” Johnson said. But tribal representatives, he said, “were really just focusing on our culture and our history and that, in a way, he was an important part of it, but … it was a small interaction compared to our overall history.”
A park service spokesperson hasn’t responded to repeated questions about the abandoned proposal.
Announced quietly on Friday, the plan quickly and — perhaps unexpectedly — laid bare the sensitivities around the image of the colonial founder of Pennsylvania and threatened to become the latest front in a fight over how to tell the nation’s history through its monuments.
A top state Republican lawmaker, Bryan Cutler, said removing Penn’s statue to “create a more inclusive environment takes (an) absurd and revisionist view of our state’s history.” Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro pressed the Biden administration to keep the statute in its “rightful home.”
The park service said it consulted with representatives of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern…
