The Lenape culture, which flourished in the mid-1500s in areas that became New York and various other mid-Atlantic coastal states following European colonisation, has a complex and often misunderstood history. The original stewards of Manhattan, the Lenape are said to have sold the resource-rich island to Dutch colonists in 1626, and over the next three centuries were the victims of genocide and forced relocation, with the largest population of Lenape-associated tribes now inhabiting Oklahoma.
The cultural traditions of Lenape communities have been disquietingly understudied but are highlighted in a small exhibition titled Lenapehoking at the Brooklyn Public Library branch in Greenpoint (until 30 April) that is billed as the first-ever Lenape-curated exhibition in New York. The show and its adjacent programmes, which have been organised by the artist and curator Joe Baker—an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians and the executive director of the Lenape Center, a non-profit organisation founded in 2009 to uplift the Lenape diaspora—aims to correct the perception of the Lenape as an extinct culture.
According to Baker, the project most importantly serves to upend hierarchical museum practices that have failed to address Lenape heritage in New York City. “Most major cities in the US have some recognition of the ancestral, original people who inhabited the place, but here in New York City there’s been almost total erasure,” he says. “Museums are just now being called upon to rethink their curatorial practice, to rethink their relationship with the communities around them and to advance dialogues and narratives, which can be challenging at times.”
The sparseness of the exhibition itself poignantly echoes the fact that the Lenape were among the Indigenous communities most afflicted by colonisation and forced removal. It features a small vitrine containing context writings, a strikingly well-preserved beaded bandolier bag from around 1850, tapestries,…
Tecumseh 
