Tag: Lenapehoking

The mound and the pit are a street installation conceived and created by Paul Kuhn, artistic director of Curio Theatre Company, which is based in the Calvary Center. Curio is about to open its production of “The Thanksgiving Play” by Larissa FastHorse, a comedy about a group of white theater artists attempting to stage a culturally sensitive holiday play at an elementary school, which goes wrong. The play made its Broadway debut in 2023, the first Broadway show by a female Native American playwright.

Kuhn wanted to acknowledge the Lenapehoking, the Lenape name for their homeland, in a more substantial way than merely a note in the playbill. Originally from Nova Scotia, Kuhn was moved by the recent discovery in Canada of possibly hundreds of unmarked graves at residential schools for Indigenous children.

Although no human remains have been exhumed, which caused a backlash against the discovery, Kuhn felt personally culpable as a descendant of white Canadians. He watched the ceremonies of Sept. 30, Canada’s annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which were televised nationally.

“All over Canada they were broadcasting live Indigenous people discussing the horrors and the atrocities that were committed against their people,” Kuhn said. “It actually had a reverse effect: It re-traumatized them.”

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“I wanted to express my gratitude, and my acknowledgment of what my people did, by having something that could really get your hands dirty,” he added. “Touching the soil gives us a direct connection to the earth.”

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DELAWARE STATE – While Delaware is known today by its European-given name, the land holds a rich history that predates colonization. The Native American inhabitants, primarily the Lenape people, had their own name for the region that reflects their deep connection to the land and its resources. 

The Land of the Lenape: Delaware’s Indigenous Roots

The Lenape people, also known as the Delaware Indians, referred to their ancestral territory as Lenapehoking, meaning “the land of the Lenape” or “where the Lenape live.” This expansive territory encompassed present-day New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, northern Delaware, and parts of New York. It was a land rich in natural resources, with abundant forests, rivers, and fertile soil, providing sustenance and livelihood for the Lenape people for centuries. 

Scheyichbi: The Delaware River

The Delaware River, a defining geographical feature of the region, held particular significance for the Lenape people. They called it the “Lenapewihittuck,” meaning “the river of the Lenape.” However, the river was also known as the “Scheyichbi,” meaning “the mainstream” or “the mother of waters.” This name reflects the river’s central role in the Lenape’s way of life, providing transportation, food, and water.

Other Place Names

Beyond Lenapehoking and Scheyichbi, the Lenape people had specific names for various locations within present-day Delaware. For example, the area around present-day Wilmington was called “Hopohacking,” meaning “place of the wild potato.” Other Lenape place names still resonate in the state’s geography, including the Christina River (“Susquehanna”) and the Brandywine River (“Wawaset”).

A Legacy of Language and Culture

While the names Lenapehoking and Scheyichbi may not be widely used today, they serve as a reminder of the Lenape people’s deep connection to the land…

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Movement Research on Instagram: “‍️ARE YOU UP FOR MORE DANCING!!?? The International Interdisciplinary Artists Consortium (IIAC) will be offering affordable workshops during the Interdisciplinary Arts Lab 2023 hosted by Movement Research. @interartsconsortium Come join teaching artists from around the world on Friday, August 4, and Saturday 5 starting at 10am. Multiple workshops are happening simultaneously each day and you can make your own schedule. On August 4, stay for the Roundtable Discussion featuring IIAC Residency Participants. The conversation kicks off at 7pm. Workshops are available on a sliding scale from $15-$30 per session. The Round Table Discussion is FREE!! RSVP required! Read the list of teachers from the International Interdisciplinary Artists Consortium below and Register Today! #LINKBIO > INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTS LAB Or visit> https://movementresearch.org/series/interdisciplinary-arts-lab-2023 IIAC Teaching Artists: ️ Esther Baker-Tarpaga (Lenapehoking/Philadelphia, PA) ️ Deborah Black (Lenapehoking/New York, NY) ️ Nicholson Billey (Lenapehoking/New York, NY) ️ yaTande Whitney V. Hunter (Lenapehoking/Philadelphia PA) ️ Martín Lanz Landázuri (Mexico City, Mexico) ️ Arely Landeros (Mexico City, Mexico) ️ Paulina Ruiz-Carballido (Paris, France/Oaxaca, Mexico) ️ Iskra Shukarova (Skopje, North Macedonia) ️ Zornitsa Stoyanova (Sofia, Bulgaria) ️ Sugar Vendil (Lenapehoking/Brooklyn, NY) @estherbakertarpaga @_deborah_black_ @drbigeye2013 @micropolis_lab @collectifvidda @bodymeld @zstoy @sugarvendil @nicholsonbilley This event is facilitated by Peter Sciscioli (Lenapehoking/Brooklyn, NY) @peter_sciscioli ️Register Today! [ID: A Close-up portrait of Esther Baker-Tarpaga wearing a red sparkly dress with a bouquet of yellow flowers poking out of the top. She is smiling softly at the camera. Behind her is a chalkboard with blurred lettering. Photo credit: Karla Conrad.]” INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTS LABnOr visit> https://movementresearch.org/series/interdisciplinary-arts-lab-2023nnud83dudca5IIAC Teaching Artists:nnu2600ufe0f Esther Baker-Tarpaga (Lenapehoking/Philadelphia, PA)nu2600ufe0f Deborah Black (Lenapehoking/New York, NY)nu2600ufe0f Nicholson Billey (Lenapehoking/New York, NY)nu2600ufe0f yaTande Whitney V. Hunter (Lenapehoking/Philadelphia PA)nu2600ufe0f Martu00edn Lanz Landu00e1zuri (Mexico City, Mexico)nu2600ufe0f Arely Landeros (Mexico City, Mexico)nu2600ufe0f Paulina Ruiz-Carballido (Paris,…

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The Sand Hill Lenape Indians have a rich history of over 10,000 years.

The Sand Hill Lenape Indians made tremendous contributions to the development of the state of New Jersey and the U.S States. An ex-mayor of Neptune Township, New Jersey, said, “It is a shame what some people in the State have done to the Sand Hill Lenape Indians.” Then he went on to say, “the Sand Hill Lenape Indians and the Reevey family are the people who made the state of New Jersey possible.”

The Sand Hill Lenape Indians were the original group of Native American families that settled in the lands of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Manhattan today over 10,000 years ago. These people were skilled farmers, builders, engineers, artists, musicians, hunters, athletes, emergency technicians, community leaders, U.S. soldiers, U.S. senators, medics, inventors, guardians, makers, teachers, etc. They also helped build cities in New Jersey, the Boardwalks, housing, and many other architectural structures in N.J. According to historic evidence, the Sand Hill Lenape Indians (“THE INDIANS OF LENAPEHOKING”) are actually some of the last living descendants of the sacred ancient Mayan mound building, “world teacher” people. In the 1600s the Sand Hill Lenape Indians opened their lands to European settlers who were trying to escape the tyranny of some of the past monarchs of Europe.

The Sand Hill Lenape tribal nation community that once had millions of members, is now down to a few thousand members. Their population reduction resulted from genocide events, land theft, “the little ice age“, broken treaties, racial misclassification, religious indoctrination, man-made pollution disasters and laws like the Indian…

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Details By Jenna Kunze March 25, 2022

NEW YORK—The Myth of Manhattan goes like this: Dutch settlers, arriving in 1626 on the island called Manahatta by its Lenape residents, believed they struck a deal with the Natives. For $24 worth of beads and trinkets, the Dutch believed they “purchased” the island, and soon built walls on the southern tip of the island—now Wall Street—to keep them out.

On Thursday, Brooklyn Public Library hosted a panel to dispel the myth of Manhattan with the co-founders of the nonprofit Lenape Center, Joe Baker (Lenape, Delaware Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma) and Hadrien Coumans (an adopted member of the Lenape WhiteTurkey-Fugate family). The panel was moderated by playwright and attorney Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee Nation).

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“It just plain couldn’t have happened for two reasons,” Nagle said in a video about the myth streamed during the remote event. “First, the Lenape had no concept of land ownership.” In other words, they did not believe that one could possess the earth to sell in the first place. 

“And second,” Nagle continued, “the Dutch had struck the deal with Lenape men who didn’t have the authority. In Lenapehoking (Lenape land), it was the women who made the big decisions.”

What Baker calls the “tenacious myth” circulating for the past 400 years covers the truth of his own origin story and how his family—who can trace their ancestral homelands directly to the center of what has become one of the most iconic cities in the world—ended up on a reservation in Oklahoma.

After the Dutch slowly pushed out the Lenape people, European settlers and eventually the U.S. government continued to push the Lenape people—who…

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Details By Jenna Kunze January 26, 2022

NEW YORK CITY—Curator, artist, and educator Joe Baker (Delaware Tribe of Indians) says his new exhibit, “Lenapehoking” (Lenape Land), at the Brooklyn Public Library’s branch in the Greenpoint neighborhood, upends museum hierarchies, in part simply by existing.

“There’s never been an exhibition to recognize Lenape people here in New York City,” Baker, a cofounder of the Lenape Center in Manhattan, told Native News Online during a walk-through of the exhibit before it opened Jan. 20. 

He said he had to knock on a lot of doors to get an exhibit up. “My goal in exhibiting this historic material is to present it—not only to the public, but to our own community—to bring this important work back into contemporary narratives,” he explained.

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The exhibit includes Baker’s own art: three handcrafted beaded bags, called bandolier bags, that are specifically worn by Lenape men on special occasions to identify individuals. It also displays two historic bags, one recently purchased by the Brooklyn Museum of Art and lent to the exhibition, and the other held by a private collector.

Because the bags are so prized by collectors, Baker said he never saw one in real life until he was completing a residency at the National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan.

“The message is: the return,” Baker said of the exhibit. “The idea that this important element of Lenape men’s dress be revived and could be returned to our communities.”

Lenape people lived on homelands across the Northeast until they were pushed out to Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario by European settlers, beginning in the 17th century. 

Also returned and exhibited on the back wall…

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The Trent House Association will present a virtual talk titled “Ties That Bind: Nanticoke and Lenape Language and Revitalization” 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 23 via Zoom (tinyurl.com/THJan23).

Karelle Hall, a member of the Nanticoke Indian Tribe and a graduate student in anthropology at Rutgers University, will trace the connections across the Lenape and Nanticoke diaspora in New Jersey and Delaware and illustrate how language shapes and reinforces those connections.

The land on which the Trent House was built is part of the traditional territory of the Lenape, called Lenapehoking. During the Colonial era and early federal period, many were removed west and north, but some remained among the three continuing historical tribal communities of the region. Today, Lenapehoking is a diaspora of different communities across the United States and Canada, connected by history, culture and language.

For Lenape and Nanticoke people, revitalizing their languages is a way to reconnect with ancestors and to reclaim traditional ways of understanding the world that are embedded in language.

This program is free and pre-registration is not required. A pay-as-you-wish donation of $10 is suggested and can be made by PayPal at (williamtrenthouse.org/donation.html).

For more information, visit williamtrenthouse.org.

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For the first time ever, a Lenape-curated exhibition featuring artifacts and masterworks from the native people of the New York Harbor region is opening in NYC.

The Brooklyn Public Library and The Lenape Center are presenting “Lenapehoking,” the Lenape name for the homeland, an exhibition of masterworks by Lenape artists past and present. Here, visitors will see never-before-seen beaded bandolier bags from the 1800s, a newly created turkey feather cape, three tapestries made of Purple Kingsessing for a rematriation project in the Hudson Valley.

The bandolier bags, which will be shown alongside contemporary examples by Joe Baker, were once an important element of men’s attire worn for important social and political occasions and served as a passport, identifying the wearer as Lenape, according to BPL. “They are a tribute to survival, made during a time of forced displacement and oppression after the Removal Act of 1830 was ratified.” The contemporary turkey feather cape created by Rebecca Haff Lowry with Sandra Lowery is worn by both men and women and provides a dramatic flourish to traditional dress but also provides warmth and protects the wearer from seasonal weather. 

The exhibit won’t only show off artifacts, Greenpoint Library’s rooftop teaching garden will feature indigenous fruit trees that were historically cultivated by the Lenape in Manhattan and there will be original music, poetry and Lenape foodways by Lenape artists and friends that will be incorporated into the programming there.

There will also be some programs through the spring, including a panel conversation with Gloria Steinem on the crisis of missing Indigenous persons; a series of original music by Brent Michael Davids; poetry readings by Rebecca Haff Lowry; insights into Lenape foodways with Farm Hub, and talks by Indigenous scholars and lecturers such as Curtis Zunigha, Heather Bruegl, and Hadrien Coumans, among others in collaboration with BPL’s Center for Brooklyn History.

This exhibit…

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The first-ever Lenape-curated exhibition in New York, Lenapehoking, is set to debut in Brooklyn later this month with never-before-seen items, a range of interactive programing, and more.

The exhibition will open at the new Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center on Jan 20, and will run through April 30.

Bandolier Bag, 2014, Joe Baker. Fabric, wool, glass beads, 24 inches L, 7inch- wide strap: Bag is 8 1/4inches H, 9″ W, Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Supplied/BPL.

Lenapehoking has been organized through an ongoing partnership between Brooklyn Public Library and The Lenape Center and it will feature never-before-seen masterworks by Lenape artists past and present, including beaded bandolier bags from the 1800s, a newly created turkey feather cape, culinary tapestries from a seed rematriation project in the Hudson Valley, and more, the organizations said in a press release.

They added that the exhibition will create a portal into the living culture of the Lenape people today coupling the objects with a robust series of educational lectures and programs throughout the winter and spring. Those include an extension onto Greenpoint Library’s rooftop teaching garden, where an orchard of Indigenous fruit trees that were historically cultivated by the Lenape in Manhattan will be grown.

The educational programs and lectures include a panel conversation with Gloria Steinem on the crisis of missing Indigenous persons; a series of original music by Brent Michael Davids; poetry readings by Rebecca Haff Lowry; insights into Lenape food ways with Farm Hub; and talks by Indigenous scholars and lecturers such as Curtis Zunigha, Heather Bruegl, and Hadrien Coumans, among others in collaboration with BPL’s Center for Brooklyn History.

Curator Joe Baker, an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians and co-founder/executive director of the Lenape Center, said: “The exhibition site is a library branch, a…

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