Category: Lenni Lenape

Doylestown, PA—On December 4th at noon, in the house where the songs and lyrics for some of the most famous musical theater shows were written: Oklahoma, Carousel, The King and I, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music, a press conference led by Greg Roth, President of The Oscar Hammerstein Museum & Theatre Education Center informed the community that the property was purchased earlier in the day and the nonprofit is now finally the owner of Highland Farm.

Present at the event was Pennsylvania State Senator Steve Santarsiero, Doylestown Township Supervisor Jenn Herring, Executive Director of the Bucks County Industrial Development Authority, TJ Lonergan, IDA Board member Mary Smithson, former Doylestown Mayor Ron Strouse, members of the Oscar Hammerstein Museum and Theatre Education Center Board and very special guests, family members Will and Mandee Hammerstein and Jenny Hammerstein.

The board worked tirelessly for years to raise enough funding, approximately two million dollars, and after purchasing the property yesterday, they will now embark on a new campaign to raise the funds necessary to renovate the entire property and build a theatre education center where the plan is to provide theatre, music, and performance programming for the community.

Greg thanked former and current board members Jamie Rogers, Vice President, Christine Junker, Secretary and Treasurer, Judy Abrams, Matt Britten, Amy Cinque, Van Dean, Sasha Eisenberg, Lori Kesilman, Vanessa Kirchner, Mike Peters, Grace Alfiero, Keith Fenimore and Meg Roth for their work in creating awareness and helping to raise the funds necessary for the purchase. Former board member Lori Kesilman commented, “I know that Oscar would be so proud of our mission to educate children of all backgrounds who are interested in all aspects of writing and musical theater arts. Today’s purchase is a result of the hard work of so many people. I am truly…

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December 5, 2023 @ 7:00 PM

“Manahatta” is an event.

Mary Kathryn Nagle’s play about the overthrow and the genocide of the Lenape Nation on the island of Manhattan returns to that historic locale, as well as the Public Theater where it was originally commissioned and workshopped in 2014. Professional regional productions of the play have followed, but “Manahatta” finally comes home in more ways than one. On Tuesday at the Public, Nagle’s play premieres in its titular locale.

It is the story of the American Holocaust, and as stories go, “Manahatta” possesses all the horrific and devastating narrative power of Hitler’s Holocaust. The difference is that the extermination of six million Jews has been the subjects of dozens of plays, from “The Diary of Anne Frank” to “Leopoldstadt.” American guilt has been much harder for Americans to write about, and until now, there hasn’t been much written on the subject in the theater beyond the ubiquitous Off Broadway apology that “this theater is built on the land of the Lenape Nation.”

Nagle could have limited her play to the “purchase” of the lower tip of the island of Manahatta. She dramatizes that $24 transaction by the Dutch from the Lenape in the 17th Century with powerful precision to show the clash of two cultures: the Lenape have no concept of ownership, which is essential to the European identity. When the Dutch merchant Peter Minuit (Jeffrey King) asks members (Enrico Nassi and Elizabeth Frances) of the Lenape Nation if the land they are “selling” belongs to them, they answer that it is their home.

That same monetary disconnect is reflected later in Nagle’s play when Bobbie (Sheila Tousey), a member of the Lenape now living in Oklahoma, needs to take out a loan on her house. The bank needs…

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If you’re looking for the area’s best holiday light displays, we’ve got you covered. We asked members of the All Things Chester County FaceBook group to send their favorite houses, and scoured the ChristmasPrism app (available for free on IOS and Android) to compile a road trip list just for you!

Chadds Ford/Pocopson

North Pole at Chadds Ford, near the Mendenhall Inn, Kennett Pike
https://christmasprism.app.link/DjSZjEm3ZEb?uri_redirect_mode=1
Drive up and listen to the radio station 91.1 FM, or get out and walk through the walking path. Light hours 5:30 – 9pm

Lenape Lights, near Brandywine Ace Pet & Farm Lenape Rd/Lenape Farm Ln
https://christmasprism.app.link/343X3AUUVEb?uri_redirect_mode=1
An interactive light display choreographed to music. Tune in to 94.9FM for the music portion of the show. Display starts at 5:30pm

Blow Mold Wonderland, near the Westtown Amish Market, Heritage Dr
https://christmasprism.app.link/idwkggFgbFb?uri_redirect_mode=1
Plent of 1960s blow molds and classic lights.

Downtown WC

A Spooky Holiday Season, S Wayne St/College Ave
https://christmasprism.app.link/PtWOW58TTvb?uri_redirect_mode=1
Come enjoy the holiday decorations with festive skeletons. The holidays with a spooky twist!

West Chester Christmas Light Display, South Concord Rd
https://christmasprism.app.link/tliQsIdeaFb?uri_redirect_mode=1
https://www.westchesterchristmaslightdisplay.com/
Raising money for the Brandywine Valley SPCA, walk through display requires a $5 donation. Letter to Santa area where kids can write their letters to Santa and receive a response

Christmas Spectacular, Tyson Rd
https://christmasprism.app.link/9iHWynAr8Eb?uri_redirect_mode=1
Come by and see our light display. Lots of lights and blow ups. Movie projector of The Grinch (live action version) plays all night long. Huge event December 16th 5:30pm

Grizzizziz Holiday Spectacular, Old Westtown Rd
https://christmasprism.app.link/CujUF0Tw5Eb?uri_redirect_mode=1
Fun house with window animations, colorful lights and patterns and lots of inflatables. Come see Santa’s Workshop and an Inflatable Frank the Gargoyle. Tune into 107.9FM for audio.

East Goshen

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The introductory panel to the exhibition “Never Broken: Visualizing Lenape Histories” — currently on view at the Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania — states something remarkably important to the region.

But it isn’t in the words. It is the image on which the text is written: an overhead view of the Abbott Marshlands at the estuary where the Crosswicks Creek meets the Delaware River.

Joe Baker’s ‘Three Sisters,’ a 1997 oil on canvas from The John and Susan Horseman Collection, courtesy of the Horseman Foundation.

The land — part of Trenton, Hamilton, and Bordentown — is the site of what had been one of the largest Eastern settlements of Native American — as well as documentation of human activity there for 13,000 years.

It is also roughly in the center of the land called Lenapehoking (Land of the Lenape).

They are the indigenous people whose territory included all of what is known today as New Jersey, New York Bay and Hudson Valley, the eastern section of Pennsylvania, and northern sections of Delaware.

They are also the people whose culture was disrupted and then suppressed to near the point of extinction by European colonization, starting in the early 1600s.

The exhibition’s reference to “Never Broken” argues that the culture has never disappeared and that the exhibition is a type of reaffirmation.

The “visualizing” reference signals that the reaffirming will be done through visual art.

And, indeed, viewers will encounter ancient Lenape designs, European and Colonial depictions of the Lenape people, and new works by contemporary Lenape artists — who combine both Lenape and European and American art traditions.

The curators of what is being touted as the first exhibition of its kind…

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Wall Street is more than just a crosstown street at the southern tip of Manhattan. The term itself has become synonymous with the entire American financial market. But its origins go back to the northern border wall of 17th century New Amsterdam. Built by enslaved people, the wall was meant to keep the English from invading the Dutch colony. But it also kept out the land’s first people, the Lenapehoking.

Of course, to the colonizers, the land was theirs, purchased from the tribe in 1626 by the Dutch West India Company. The land was traded for (in today’s exchange) about $1,000 worth of goods, including tools, guns, cloths, and wampum, the shell beads used as currency in fur trading between Native Americans and early settlers. Peter Minuit brokered the deal.

In Mary Kathryn Nagle’s play Manahatta, now running at The Public Theater through December 23, the playwright draws a direct line from that first trade of land ownership on Wall Street to the housing market collapse in 2008. Nagle deftly weaves past and present to tell the story of the 17th-century Lenape-Dutch trade and a modern Lenape family in Oklahoma, whose home is under threat of bank repossession. It’s also a tale of two siblings: of one sister who stayed in Oklahoma and works to keep the Lenape language alive and the other sister who left to work for a financial firm on Wall Street.

Rainbow Dickerson, Sheila Tousey, Jeffrey King, David Kelly, and Joe Tapper in Manahatta Joan Marcus

Nagle is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and originally from Oklahoma (where most tribes were forcibly relocated during the Indian Removals). She now makes her home in Washington, D.C. and, like many playwrights, Nagle has a day job. She’s a lawyer, specializing in…

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Throughout Native American Heritage Month, the University, in collaboration with The Heard Museum’s Native Artists Resource Group, displayed prints crafted by Native American veterans along the walls of the ArtSpace West gallery on the West Valley Campus from Nov. 8 to Nov. 22.

The concept was brought to life with two three-day workshops taught by Jacob Meders, an associate professor of interdisciplinary arts and performance. The workshop showed veterans the process of making, carving and block printing — a traditional Indigenous art form. Later, their work was displayed in the ArtSpace West gallery.

Block printing is “carving into blocks and then picking them up and printing them to the press,” according to Meders.

“It’s not about what you get out of it for yourself, it’s about what do you do for others,” Meders said. “It’s more meaningful.”

The Native Veterans Print Exhibition was created by Marcus Monenerkit, the director of community management at the Heard Museum.

“The Native veterans have been healing through the arts for generations,” Monenerkit said. “As you know, the past warriors would come home and take part in ceremonies, and that ceremony is art.”

For this project, Monenerkit wanted to provide a safe space to “create and to be free and to be with other veterans.” 

Today is Native American Heritage Day, a time to celebrate the cultures and history of indigenous peoples in the Southwest. Discover their traditions and history year-round at the Heard Museum. Plan your visit and experience the diversity of indigenous cultures. pic.twitter.com/U7IArv5Fiw

— Heard Museum (@HeardMuseum) November 24, 2023

The printing workshop was not only about the art itself but also the effect it can have on others. 

“Instead, it is focused on the purpose of art. Art is a purposeful…

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ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A new 25-year lease will help the Museum of Indian Culture bring Allentown’s indigenous history to life, according to its executive director.

City Council members this month unanimously approved a new quarter-century lease — at $1 a year — for the museum in the Little Lehigh Parkway.

Pat Rivera, who’s served as the museum’s executive director for two decades, said her organization is “thrilled with” the new lease, as it can move forward with plans to “expand beyond our four walls (to) where the Lenape story actually happened.”

The museum recently received just over $1.5 million to build a Lenape village on three-quarters of an acre.

“We’re going to be able to take the landscape and the history and meld it all together.”

Pat Rivera, Museum of Indian Culture executive director

That land will include seven “educational pods” featuring demonstrations of indigenous “lifeways,” like fishing, cooking and making nets, Rivera said.

The demonstrations will show “how life existed primarily in the 17th century, the very start of when the European settlers got here and started with trade,” she said.

Courtesy

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Pat Rivera, Museum of Indian Culture

A concept plan for the Lenape Village established in April 2021.

“We’re going to be able to take the landscape and the history and meld it all together,” Rivera said. Once the upgrades are complete, “we’ll be able to reflect that history for generations to come. So we’re really excited to be able to share the Lenape story.”

The village is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025.

The money will also fund a new welcome center at the museum, an extension of the Lenape Trail and an audio tour, she said.

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