Next week, for the first time, Philadelphia will officially celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, thanks to an executive order by Mayor Kenney last February that replaced Columbus Day with a celebration of Native Americans on the second Monday in October.
In some ways, it marked the end of a long fight, with Philly following the lead of cities across the country that have stopped celebrating the man who “discovered” America and started honoring the Indigenous Peoples who are still thriving right here in our city and across the country.
But to Indigenous Peoples’ Day Philly co-founder and executive director Mabel Negrete, it’s only the beginning of the work needed to properly acknowledge the first people to occupy this region—starting with recognizing the Lenape tribes in the diaspora as sovereign nations with rights to land in our state. Pennsylvania is one of about a dozen states that doesn’t recognize a single tribe.
“It’s bittersweet, that 339 years later, the local governments are actually now talking to us,” says Ben Miller, member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians.
Those conversations are starting, though. Last month, chiefs from the five federally recognized Delaware tribes (none of which live on their original homelands, or even in the state) met virtually with Governor Wolf and his cabinet for the first time.
“It’s bittersweet, that 339 years later the local governments are actually now talking to us,” says artist Ben Miller, who helped organize the virtual meeting (and is also organizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day Philly’s event this year). He’s a member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, which has about 12,000 members and is based in Oklahoma—where many Lenape resettled after being displaced—on Cherokee lands. “We are discussing an opportunity to come back home,” Miller says. “We want to get to…
