When Principal Chief Dennis Coker of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware (LITD) reclaimed the first half-acre of land taken from his ancestors, he was hoping for the property to hold promises of a fresh start. Instead, it held echoes of the past, evident in the 200 car tires littering the property, among other contamination.
Just off of Fork Branch Road in the town of Cheswold, Delaware, sits this half-acre of property, donated to Coker and his Tribe in the 1990s. Once home to a Lenape schoolhouse and church, the site was used as an industrial dump for 30 to 40 years under state ownership. Over this time, the land accumulated high concentrations of heavy metals, invasive species such as “Ailanthus altissima,” truck beds and 200 car tires.
The land was returned to Coker and the Tribe once property flippers saw its degraded state. But what the rest of the world saw as undesirable, Coker saw as a sliver of hope.
“I viewed it as an opportunity, number one, to heal the land,” Coker said. “And our goal when we started looking and hoping for the Land Back movement to be a benefit to us was to really demonstrate that we could be good stewards of the land.”
And good stewards they were – in just a few years with the help of some volunteers, Coker and his Tribe rehabilitated the property into what is now an edible forest garden of native species. The garden features plants that nourish and sustain humans and animals alike.
“The goal was to design and create an edible forest garden,” Coker said. “When we say edible, it’s edible for all our relations. The four-legged, the two-legged, the winged.”
In just a few years,…
