Munsee

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More than 1,000 miles from his ancestral homeland, Curtis Zunigha’s gravelly voice managed to drown out the incessant static of a phone line.

All the way from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, you could hear Zunigha’s passion for the countless stories he carries with him of his people, the Lenape.

“I’m preserving in a dynamic way our culture and our history and our traditions, so that I could pass that on to a younger generation and they can keep going, because that’s our obligation to the creator and to the ancestors, for the gift of our culture and our language and our knowledge of who we were and who we are,” he said.

Zunigha is an enrolled member and cultural director of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, one of three federally recognized tribes of the Lenape in the United States — none of which are currently located in their original homeland.

The Lenape, whose name means “the real people,” are indigenous to the Delaware Valley. From parts of New York and eastern Pennsylvania to New Jersey and the coast of Delaware, the Lenape lived in this region for thousands of years. Those relatively newer place names are products of the same colonization that violently uprooted the native people from the area once known as Lenapehoking.

Curtis Zunigha is an enrolled member and cultural director of the Delaware Tribe of Indians. (Courtesy of Curtis Zunigha)

How the Lenape ended up displaced from their homeland…

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Community members in Frenchtown, with the support of the borough, have launched the Frenchtown River Ambassadors (FRA), a project of Sustainable Frenchtown.

FRA volunteers welcome visitors at tents, which are stationed on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the summer in the parking lot south of Frenchtown bridge, and when volunteer capacity permits, at Old Frenchtown Field and 12th Street.

Volunteer ambassadors host an interactive children’s environmental program at 11 a.m. and a river clean-up at 4 p.m., each day. Visitors are also offered brochures with a map of Frenchtown’s amenities, as well as a coupon to present to participating local businesses offering seasonal promotions.

The project was designed and launched by Frenchtown residents: Environmental Commission member and biologist Susan Quackenbush; artist and photographer Jorge Sanchez; former borough council member Holly Low; and local activists Alleigh Sobey and Maggie Cooke. Six more residents serve as volunteer captains, including Pastor Peter Mantell of the United Methodist Church, while an additional 20-plus community members are volunteering as River Ambassadors.

“Frenchtown has become an increasingly popular tourist destination, but during summer 2020, the community experienced a dramatic spike in river visitors, due in part to the pandemic,” according to a written statement provided by Sustainable Frenchtown. “The Borough managed the increase in garbage and parking issues, while complaints about crowds, parking, and litter – as well as hate speech directed at river visitors – piled up on the local social media page,” the statement read.

In response, the Frenchtown River Ambassadors project is “committed to the philosophy that public parks, biodiversity, and open spaces are held in the public trust, and should be accessible to residents and visitors alike, free from discrimination.”

“We decided to take the initiative to do something positive for a healthy coexistence among the people who visit us, our own neighbors and above all, for the…

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