hello everyone and welcome

to tonight's program and thank you so much for being here. my name is marcia eli i come to you from the center for brooklyn history at the brooklyn public library and bpl presents, which is the library's arts and culture arm that brings you so many programs and conversations like tonight's as well as musical performances family and children events literary and philosophical discussions and so much more tonight's program the history of lenape forced removals is one part of a much larger and far-raging initiative that bpl is honored to be presenting in partnership with and with the wisdom and leadership of the lenape center. titled will not be hoking. this initiative includes new york's first ever la not be

curated exhibition of lenape cultural arts, which is now on view at bpl's greenpoint library and environmental education center as well as many future programs on topics like the myth of the purchase of manhattan. seed remitriation we'll have poetry readings and there's an upcoming published anthology of essays on low-nape history. it's quite ambitious. i am humbled. to represent my bpl colleagues who have led this ambitious effort. it's truly my honor to introduce tonight's discussion on their behalf. in a few moments you'll hear three perspectives on a history that has too long been overlooked misrepresented and lied about for 10,000 years the not be lived and will not be hooking an area that includes parts of what are now the states of pennsylvania, connecticut to york and delaware.

and through waves of often brutal forced migrations forced removals. this first nation was dispersed to locations from oklahoma to wisconsin departs further north and west before i introduce tonight's speakers. i have two quick notes for you first as always you have the option to use closed captioning tonight. that button is at the bottom of your screen. and second. i want to invite you to share your questions tonight use the q&a box, which is also at the bottom of your screen. now it is my honor to introduce our speakers and turn it over to them. curtis zuniga is an enrolled member of the delaware tribe of indians and co-founder and co-director of the lenape center based in new york city which promotes the history and culture of the lenape people through the

arts humanities social identity and environmental activism. his multimedia experience includes writing producing directing acting narrating and composing and performing traditional music. joe baker is an artist educator curator and activist who has worked in the field of native arts for the past 30 years. he is an enrolled member of the delaware tribe of indians, oklahoma and co-founder and executive director of the lenape center. he's also an adjunct professor at columbia university school of social work social work and was recently visiting professor of museum studies at colorado college and joe curated the lenape hoking exhibition. i mentioned earlier heather bruegel is an indigenous historian and a citizen of the onative nation of wisconsin and first line descendant, stockbridge, muncie. in addition to her many speaking

engagements. she has become the accidental activist speaking to different groups about intergenerational racism and trauma and helping to build awareness of our environment the fight for clean water and other issues in native community. she's the former director of cultural affairs for the stockbridge muncie community and now heather serves as a director of education for forge project. and our moderator tonight. dr. tb gallus has been the executive director of the auschwitz institute for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities since 2006. born and raised in romania, dr. gallas previously worked as an associate researcher for the uk parliament where he helped develop the uk position on the un special advisor on the prevention of genocide. welcome, welcome to you all i'm now going to turn this over to curtis for a word of welcome on

behalf of the not be healthy. hey. colomosi hutch duluency alushi okwas new england, mohana ali pike lanape hoking colosseum aho and arpeg good evening, everyone and welcome to this amazing webinar, and we're i am curtis zuniga. i am a co-director of lenape center as mentioned an arts and cultural organization. that's manhattan based in the beginning but now we cover the entirety of lenape hoking the land of the lenape the original

homeland which extends all the way up into the foothills of the catskills mountains and all the way down the delaware river to include eastern, pennsylvania, new jersey and emptying into the delaware bay. that's our original homeland. so it's amazing that we are part of this webinar this evening and on behalf of the lenape center and speaking as a lenape man. i welcome you. this place called lenape hoking, and we're very glad that you are here with us this evening from wherever you are joining us. what is she? thank you. thank you very much curtis, and i would like to welcome everyone and also recognize that i'm talking to you today from from the land of the united the

original people of the land where i'm speaking to you today. i would also like to start by recognizing that the organization that i have the joy to lead the auschwitz institute is is on in the land of the lanape and i would also like to recognize the lineup is deep connection to the nanape who can homeland as an organization dedicated to a trustee prevention. yeah. she's institute believes in the importance of acknowledging the settler colonial genocide perpetrated against this community and the resilience of the lenape who still today continue to resist asia i would like to to invite all of us to to listen to this very important discussion. that's about to take place today and to open our hearts to learning about the history of our land and the history of the people of our land i would like

to invite curtis to start us off in this discussion curtis. you have the floor. thank you. all right. i was i was asked to write a an essay. about what was originally called the forced migration of the lenape. and i ended up riding a lengthy sss essay, but my approach was to get away from the term of migration or diaspora. we've been using that term. but the more i reviewed and remembered our story. it truly is forced relocation. in writing about our people we were the ones that encountered the europeans originally it began well person began with the

italian explorer. sailing for the french verrazano followed a hundred years later by henry hudson who was in englishman, but he was sailing for the dutch east india company uh trying to explore wrote routes for the fir tree. upon encountering the lenape people. there are numerous stories and accounts written by explorers military leaders missionaries and other colonial settlers. that talked about the lenape people. as a strong and ancient people with a with a culture and a belief system that in some ways actually were much akin to some of the british quakerism. above all we had and still have

a deep. spiritual relationship with the land so when we talk about being removed from the homeland lenape hoking the homeland of the original, illinois people. to me and by extension to so many of our of our people to me. it's like being an orphan. it's like someone who has been taken away from the arms. of our mother and taken away far away. to where we can not our mother anymore. and there's a long history. that goes all the way from original contact in the early 16th century to the late 19th century and today the lenape

people are broken up into various groups. and today their names include the name delaware. that's our colonial name again. i am a member of the delaware tribe of indians. that's our colonial name delaware. i was actually came from a british colonial governor. sir thomas west now the lineup a people. became known as the delaware throughout this historic period of time. but as we encountered more and more of the europeans again the dutch followed by the british. and then ultimately the americans as as the hunger for more land and opportunity to to

have a free and independent land to live on they displaced the original people who are already free and independent people living on that land. that's the linopic. these are stories and much of what you will see in this exhibit. will tell our story of how we were forced away from our homeland in an environment in a theater of war. after a while we became war refugees if you listen to the news or watch the news and you see about other countries and and people did being displaced in their own country and the theater of war. well, that's what the lenape went through. and so this exhibit will not only tell that story and there's an there there's a essay that i wrote. where i take us through that

trail of force removal where today the lenape today's modern descendants known as the delaware my tribe and i'm an enrolled member of the delaware tribe. we're located in northeastern, oklahoma, and we've been here since 1867. there are also other communities one other in oklahoma too and southern ontario canada and one in, wisconsin. collectively we are the descendants of the original lanape. we're like different branches from the same tree trunk, but that tree trunk is rooted firmly in the homeland and now with lineup a center and i've been involved for over 10 years now with linape center. i feel like that orphan child who has come back. back to new york back to lenape hoking.

to connect with my mother the motherland the homeland the original homeland will not be hoking. it is that deep spiritual connection with the land. the waters the ancestors it's never gone away and thanks to line up a center and our friendships and partnerships that we've made with such institutions as the brooklyn library and the center for brooklyn history. people are making away for the lenape to return. to our homeland and in doing so and by telling our story people learned that we still exist. we there was so much erasure of our history and our culture and our language and our presence in lenape hockey. erasure done by centuries by decades of people who took over

the land most often times by force or by fraud and basically wrote the one up a out of the history but lenape center and our friends with the brooklyn library. we're here to tell you that. we never died out we are still here. and we are grateful that we can come back to the homeland now and connect with the spirit of our homeland. and then doing so we continue the generation that generational connection. after all of these centuries back with the homeland and that is extremely gratifying. it it ruins us more in our culture and our language and we pay honor to the sacrifices of our ancestors. and the gift of the creator for

our culture and language which we still have and that that's passed down to us. and we will continue to grow back in lenape a hoking and assert our presence and assert a claim to our homeland that we never willingly gave up. i hope you all will learn more about bay center. we do have a website called the lenapecenter.com and you'll find a lot of incredible information about the growth and development of our organization. but although the work that we've done. we're an arts and a culture organization. we also are very much. engaged in environmental protection and care for the land because again that land has a spirit. so i share with you. this sense of the lenape people

are no longer. orphans, we have returned to our mother and our mother is opening her arms and welcoming us back. and we also by working with various organizations in lenape hoking. we're taking our place back. at the table of power and we bring traditional knowledge and an incredible culture and language that only enrichens the entire. fabric of that which is line up a hoking that which is new york city that which is the brooklyn library and all of our partners and all of the wonderful people that we have. gathered together with so with that there are some other folks here.

representing went up a hoking. i want to issue share this time with them to provide additional perspectives and i encourage you to look throughout all of the activities that's going here with the greenpoint library in brooklyn the center for brooklyn history and you'll only see much more bigger and better presence of the lenape center in the years to come. so with that i say one issue. thank you. way she curtis and now we will turn to heather and joe and after that we will open a discussion with based on the questions that you all in the audience are sending as as we are we are starting the conversation. now i would like to invite heather to join the discussion heather.

hi. thank you so much conan mante nijizi kishek and clay by remember my language correctly. my name in our language is sunflower and so bloom. i was i had my naming ceremony in the middle of the pandemic and september of 2020. i'm very honored to be part of this panel this evening. thank you to joe and curtis for the continued learning. thank you to the brooklyn public library and she's a brooklyn the center for brooklyn history. i'm so honored to be here. i'm coming to you from the homelands of the mahikanya which are the people of the waters that are never still today. they're known as the stockbridge muncie community and the sheet of government lies in bowler, wisconsin. i'm very honored to be able to be coming here from the homelands. i moved here in october of last year from wisconsin prior to

that. i was living on the homelands of three fires council in southeastern, michigan. i worked for a number of years for the stockbridge muncie community and now i'm here in upstate new york. well, actually i just learned i'm not an upstate new york. i'm technically i guess i'm in like the middle. apparently i was wrong the whole time, but that's okay. i'm just you know in the homelands here and i'm so honored to be part of this panel. i wanted to start with this. this is one of my favorite favorite quotes i guess and it was from lakota activist john trudell we're not indians and we're not native americans. we're older than both concepts. where the people where the human beings? i think that's a really powerful to stop and think about that. we're older than both of those concepts. we are the human beings. when i hear that i think about how wouldn't be originals where

the ogs, you know, where where the people who were here from the beginning when creator created this beautiful turtle island and placed us upon here. we were here first and this is our homeland and through forced removals time and time again, we were forced into different areas. i'm a first line descendant of the stockbridge amc community now located in northeast, wisconsin through the treaty of 1856 from land that was seated from the ho chunk and menominee nations. other nations gave up pieces of their home. so that my ancestors. and i'll include the oneida and this as well because i am an enrolled citizen of the oneida nation, but other nations gave up their homelands so that we could have a place to call home. and the reason we needed that place to call home was because of colonialism. we were forced out from the

start mohican nation first encountered in explorers in 16:09. and that was with henry hudson as curtis mentioned earlier. from that moment on from the moment that colonialism collides with the indigenous. lives of this land things change forever your life changes forever and i sit now that i'm in the homelands now that i've had the opportunity to come home. i can't help when i'm out in the land to stop and think about what my ancestors went through in order so that i could sit here and talk to you about them today. famine disease loss of land forced removal wars death conversion to christianity loss of self lost of culture loss of tradition loss of language they

did all of that so that i can now tell you their story. and contrary to popular belief mohegan nation is older than colonization and we're older than the tales told by james bentmore cooper. he got it very wrong. it's a very beautiful movie. i'm not gonna lie to cinematography is great, but it's not accurate and it's history. mohegan nation the mahikaniac the people in the waters that are never still settled along the makana talk, which is the river that flows both ways. you know, it has the hudson river. i don't call it that river. it's the mahikhana attack because that's its name. from removal from our homelands into new york to settling in the western part of massachusetts, which was also part of our homelands. a great conversion happened there and that conversion doll with christianity.

i had the opportunity last summer to come to the homeland for the first time and walk walk the grounds in stockbridge, massachusetts and think about the history that i was there the history that happened there in that place and one of the places that i stopped in was the mission house, which is located in stockbridge and knowing what happened at that mission house that mission house was set up so that john sergeant who was a missionary and a priest at the time. can help convert indigenous peoples to christianity. so you had mohicans there you had oneida and mohawk and narragansett and pequot and brotherton and all these other nations kind of come together. and what happens there is not only is there a loss of that traditional ceremony and religions, but what happens is our identity starts to be stripped away from us because we're no longer mohican. we're no longer pequot.

we're no longer narragansett. we're no longer one night up because for some reason it's too hard to remember all of those names. the english then daba stockbridge indians so they start by taking away their land and then they start to strip our identity and who we are so from that moment on. we became the stockbridge indians or the stockbridge mohican indians. and that kind of stuck with us, you know, we consider ourselves mohicans mohican nation or lunape, you know, lenape indians, but yet we've got that colonized name coming with us that stockbridge name. and we what happens next is the american revolution starts, right? this is a war for independence. i'm not gonna lie to you. i love early colonial history. i find it very fascinating. i'm like the world's biggest nerd when it comes to this and i can receive it word for word. but what we don't talk about is

that the mohican nation and other indigenous nations including those in the holden ashone or the iroquois confederacy, which would have been the oneida on the tuscarora fought on the side of the colonists, right? we served under george washington's, you know banner we were there. and what happens when we come back from war? is rather than forced out of our homelands again, we find that when we were all fighting for the freedom to form the united states. we were helping everyone we come back and our lands been taken. so then we move off again. this time we're in indiana. let me get to indiana and the land we were that we were supposed to help settle on. which was going to be with some of our lenovo brothers and sisters. they had been forced into selling. we had no place to stay. so then we're moved again and this time we're moved even further from our homelands removed to wisconsin first into

the southern part of the state where we settled in what is now stockbridge, wisconsin and then kaukauna, wisconsin and we set up a home there. finally. there was a place for us to be but again, it was long a river the fox river and that river became a major waterway used for transportation of goods moving products around and settlement was sprouting. non-native settlers were coming into the area. they needed the space. we had to move again. and so it was because of the menominee nation and the whole chunk nation. giving up their homelands. we finally moved further north and had a place to call home. it was also while our time that would be were in wisconsin now a group of our lenape brothers and just came and joined us the muncie lenape. and that's when we became known as the stockbridge muncie community. we embraced both those. for example, you know we learned

both languages at least you can in the community. you can learn lanape. you can also learn muncie. my naming ceremony happened in muncie. so i am in ownida woman with mohican ancestry with a muncie name. so i feel very honored that i'm able to represent all parts of the culture that i carry. but when we moved up to the homelands or our homelands in wisconsin in 1856, the land was beautiful. it was covered in forests. wasn't that great for farming, but it had great for us. but lumber barons came in and they clear cut the land. what were we going to do for an economic base? again, we were in a position where we were going to be losing a lot of land. and we were going to be losing our livelihood. but there were some great leaders within that community who fought very hard was stuck

to their guns and were able to reclaim some of that during the passage of the indian reorganization act 1934. we were able to form tribal governments again. we were able to have our leadership. the rockrack tradition culture and in recent years language this is all very important. friends, what we also started doing is we started making those trips home. back to the homelands back to the you know, the eastern parts of new york. massachusetts, connecticut, vermont new jersey pennsylvania people started coming home. and when i have to tell it's it's such an amazing feeling when you step on these lands. i again made my first trip out here last last summer and as we crossed over the mahikana tech number one, i hate bridges. i don't like bridges. they're too high. i don't like them and i never looked down.

but as we were crossing over the river for the first time, i looked down. i looked down. and i wasn't nervous and i wasn't scared. i look down and i saw. i saw my ancestors. i saw the villages and i saw the canoes. and there was this calmness that came over me. and it was so unbelievably amazing. and then after that calmness and happiness went away. the anger started to set in the anger of knowing what happened here? understanding the history of it some historian first ideal in facts. and i i let that anger get a hold of me a little while. because why you know my ancestors removed off of this land for progress.

and that's something that we have to talk about. we have to have a reckoning with that. we have to understand that and i feel so honored and so excited that you know, this will not be hoking exhibit is up. because it's going to be truth. it's putting truth into spaces that truth wasn't always in and that is really important and i feel so lucky that i'm able to be part of this and talk about our history and i want to just finish with a quote from one of the greatest diplomats leaders that i think mohican nation had that was john quinney. and he gave a speech and reedsville new york 1954 on the fourth of july and his speech has been equated a lot of times to the frederick douglass douglas. speech. what is the fourth of july to a black man? same concept? what does the fourth of july mean to an indigenous person? so john quinney gives this great speech and i want to leave you

with this and i want you to think on it and i want you to meditate it meditate on it because it means so much. my friends your holy book the bible. teaches us that individual offenses are punished in an existence when time shall be no more. and the animals of the earth are equally instructive that national wrongs are avenged national crimes atoned for in this world to which alone the confirmation of existence adapts them. these events are above our comprehension and for a wise purpose. for myself and for my tribe i ask for justice. i believe it will sooner or later occur. and may the great good spirit enable me to die in hopes. thank you very much for including me. i look forward to your questions and i turn this over to my next elder joe baker. thank you.

thank you very much heather joe. hello, everyone. it's a great pleasure for me to join those conversation this evening. i want to express my gratitude to the brooklyn public library the center for brooklyn history and my fellow tribal members curtis zuniga and heather burgle. you know my story and my thoughts tonight are really informed by the idea of both past and present and the idea that colonization while it has a historical thread and trajectory is still very much alive and present in today's experience. as a tribal elder and a vietnam

era veteran. i've made a conscious choice to return to the lenape homeland to do the work of building a platform for the return of our people to this incredible. place that is our home. growing up in oklahoma. i was inspired by the the stories of tribal elder nora thompson deed when she described her return trips to the homeland back in the 1970s and that instilled me a curiosity to know more about this place that we come from. so what i want to share with you tonight is how the past also informs the present and how some of these historical moments in time have found expression in the real life experiences. of my life today in manhattan so

my story begins with my family the white turkey family simon white turkey who is first his first begins to appear in publications in the in the mid 1800s from the last federal reserve of the lenape people in and around, lawrence, kansas. simon white turkey was prominent in the successful term. turn away of quantrell's rate on lawrence. so we should mentioned in that publication and that was an 1863 but as kurt as curtis and heather have mentioned these places we were removed to that were going to become our permanent home. we're short-lived and with the advance of the railroad into kansas. we once again, we're forced to relocate into indian territ.

in 1867 and at that time. the main body of delaware's who had and by that definition. i mean those delaware those linuppy people who had stayed together throughout all of the removals and removals and found themselves once again, being removed to indian territory. we numbered 25 30 families about 900 people who were on wagon trains moving into indian territory. and one person grandma mahoney who was in the care of our family the white turkey family was the keeper of it all which is a traditional ceremony of the lenape that ensures the health and well-being of the community the community health that was 1867.

and 2021 through the efforts of lenape center they descendants of the mahoney grandma mahoney family the half family. was reunited again with the white turkey family. rebecca haflower who lives in san diego and david half who lives in the phoenix area again joined with us here in new york for lenape center and doing the good work of returning our presence here. from that place in oklahoma or before the before the arrival into indian territory in 1867. we have to think about that period of time because it was the result of the indian removal act of 1830 and it forced over

60 different tribal nations into one area indian territory. so people coming into indian territory from different regions with different cultures and different beliefs and different languages all living in close proximity to one another and living with the purposeful goal of survivors. how do we survive this place and time? and then along comes the daws act in 1887, and i want to share with you. a moment of two weeks ago when i was outside of new paul's new york, and i was at the mohonk mountain. it's actually resort and there i was learning more about the

history of that particular place. and the history there was it was established by a quaker family and and the 1870s. it's it began a resort the resort began in 1870, but in 1883 to 1916 the family decided to open their doors and invite conversations inviting the bureau of indian affairs and the both the house and senate representatives of the indian commission to that resort to discuss. policies that would affect indian communities across this country and two weeks ago i was there in the exact place the parlor it's called where the dawes act was created.

so that was a moment on a very it's a very personal thing to be standing in the exact place. where laws and policies were created in visioned that would remove millions of acres from the hands of native people. and and would open up those surplus called surplus lands to white settlement and that specifically struck a personal chord with me because it impacted my family then. and it impacts my family today. so these acts of colonization that we we like to neatly think of as things that occurred in the past. i think we have to really understand that they still are active today. so i want to talk about the daws act and my my family history

with that. my family was awarded over just under 700 acres in washington county. 160 acres to the individual head of household and 80 acres of per adult children, so that impacted my grandmother stella why turkey frugate and her allotment was consisted of 80.995 acres in washington county all of that land. soon became well with the discovery of oil it became. an asset another land mass that was open to development for the extractive industries, so indian

families were descended upon by entrepreneurs and the oil industry and all sorts of legal maneuverings were occurring within that area of oklahoma to gain, access to those lands in 1924. my grandmother died suddenly a poisoning. in 1934 my uncle wilbur wright who was scheduled to testify and it forgery case. was murdered the 1960s through water flood in 1950s that particular allotment was flooded with water for a remedy of to refresh the oil supply at that time, and there a great environmental damage. so there were attempts to

mitigate that damage through environmental resources and the 1950s 1960s and in 1970. the wealth have been capped the the tanks have been removed and there seemed to be a certain level of peace that felt over that land. but by 19 by the 2020 2004 the all-american pipeline company suddenly appears and there is a movement underfoot to bring a pipeline diagonally across the allotment which at that at this time in history is is being farmed. my mother was in the courts protesting and fighting this pipeline access just before her death.

and of course the courts decided in favor of the pipeline company based on the 1904 access to a pipeline. historic pipeline by the prairie pipeline company so so often we we think of these acts of colonialism has acts of the historical past when actually they play out in daily life today. and so i would offer that their indian there are many stories family stories of resistance that continue within our communities and that are worthy of a greater visibility that are worthy of an airing a public hearing that we we desperately need in terms of our society and

our progress into the future. it's interesting that. this time that we find ourselves in and let's speak directly of the experience in new york city. that before the creation of lenape center some 13 years ago. there was an almost complete erasure of our history here. no institution had stepped forward to make available an exhibition of lenape art and culture that was celebrate our existence and our homeland our participation and vital participation in in the art and culture of this region and and so, you know we continuously

fight against that erasure and we do that through opportunities of partnership and collaboration with organizations that are really making their assets and their resources available to us so that we can tell our story and share our experiences and i think that is very important and for anyone who was in the audience wondering what can be done today to you know to to help support a more truthful telling of a very complex history i encourage you to reach out to lenape centering encourage you to reach out with other partners and participate in an open discussion about better ways of living which i

think are essential for all people regardless of where you're coming from. and so with that i passed this back to tibby. thank you very much. curtis had a job for for sharing your thoughts sharing stories of removal suffering and through the assays that you have written curtis and how the the details of suffering endured by communities. i would my organization works to prevent the trustees to prevent genocide to prevent crimes against humanity among which force transfer of population force removal. when people speak these days about to trustees they focus on the killing hearing you share the stories of removal the stories of continued continuing

colonialism and continuing crime. i wanted to ask you from the perspective of the lenape community and i don't see mohican community. that we severing the relationship with model lands through removal. how does that play in the sense of continuing crime committed against the communities? do you have any thoughts on that? had there please. yeah, um, well, i mean, it's something that's still happening right? so it didn't just stop when we removed off of the land that continuously slow genocide continues to this day and i know that that sounds harsh and this is not going to be like a very eloquent or happy answer but, you know, we were removed off of the land under reservations reservations were supposed to be

temporary. they were supposed to be holding places for us and why because we are in 2022. we should not exist according to what the plan was going to be right because as long as there are indigenous people around there are sovereign nations around treaties still have to be upheld which means the government the federal government is still responsible for their end of the treaty and i will also note that there is never been a treaty made between the united states and a native nation that has been 100% upheld on the side of the federal government. they have never never upheld their end of the bargain and so because of that. they don't want to up they don't want to do that. so you've got to institute ways to get rid of quote the population and one of those things that was introduced was the concept of blood quantum, right?

we're the only group that has to have documented. you know, how much quote indian blood that we have the only other groups that i can think of that have to do that are dogs and horses. and indigenous people right? we're the only people that have to do that because the minute that quantum dips below whatever the requirement is the tribes start to disappear and when the tribe start to disappear, they don't have the federal government doesn't have to uphold those treaty rights anymore. reservations were supposed to be temporary. because we are not supposed to be here. and i mean so that that genocide from the start from that removal just continues and perpetuates today. it's 2022, you know, they're still trying to find ways to solve the quote indian problem. so it is something you know, it started with the removal of the land, but then there were so

many other things that added on top of that in order to help get rid of us. another aspect of that heather and thank you for that perspective is the ongoing psychological trauma. that is inflicted as a result of colonialism. you know and and i'm speaking to the spirits that exists just outside the parking lots and the darkness of indian bars. i'm speaking about the domestic violence that plagues our communities i'm speaking. about the atrocities there's the secrets that are held within families the lateral violence the still a part of our communities. these are all. results of a people a society who has been removed from their

original place through trauma after trauma after trauma. and i think that the challenge today. is defined a positive way of of responding to this brutal and oftentimes violent history that we continue to hold within our beings. and i think joe hit on it very well that there is generational trauma historic trauma that is oftentimes acted out in today's lenape or delaware people. today's indian communities. they are feeling the residual effects of colonialism. which began and this is the tough part of examining the truth in history that lenape center is presenting. that colonialism is based on the christian doctrine of discovery?

and this concept of manifest destiny. that the christian europeans sent to this land to take dominion over it to that in all of the language whether it was written in latin or other languages. the indians were referred to as the savages and the directive was to convert them into christians who would become the working class to extract the resources from the land and send that back to the kings and queens and the popes and of everybody back in europe and then also all of that land then would be a made available to this wave and wave of people coming to this new land. and there was this idea that

that indians were savages so you either convert them or you can kill them and it's all right to kill them because royalty and the pope said i sanction this in the name of christ. it's okay. if you do that, don't feel guilty about it. and they did. scalp bounties to kill lenape to remove them from their homeland the introduction of smallpox infected blankets given to learn up a indians these these kinds of old tactics push the lenape away and we became erased. from the history books from the conscience of the people and it's part of the reason why not base center is combating this erasure.

telling the truth because in a way it helps people wake up and realize that we're still here. we are still a living thriving people with a culture and a language and we deserve to be welcome back in the homeland and a loud to connect with the homeland and the spirit of the homeland and take our place rightfully at the table of all power whether it's political religious economic. artistic, whatever it may be the lanape people collectively and our efforts as the directors of lenape center and our other friends. we want to bring these issues forward and find ways of changing and affecting public policy today so that we're not still dealing with the vestiges of colonial. and historical trauma one of

which were actively involved in and that's the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and children and now it's in just all indigenous people they're in to date in 2022 many people still look at indian people and the lenape a much like they did 500 years ago much like they did in 1776 when thomas jefferson called us merciles savages when he wrote the declaration of independence combating the erasure. is more than just dealing with the past? it's laying a path for the future so that when the lenape take our place back in our homeland. we can bring traditional knowledge. practices and traditions that will only strengthen. the the existing community today and we're ever so grateful for people like the brooklyn library and other institutions that are

welcoming us back and giving us a place at the table. that is what we are hoping will be and an important emphasis on our mission as lenape center in the years to come. thank you very much for responding to my question. maybe. here's the right moment to speak a bit right our experience at the ashfords institute. we embarked with the help of the lenape center on a process of developing our living land acknowledgment to engage with the history and to engage with the present of the history of our land and of the crimes committed on our lands and i cannot tell you in the audience how grateful we are to do in our business center for the guidance provided to us for us to understand as an institution working with human rights how we can contribute to engaging with with the consequences of the

history of our land and to contribute to dismantling. hope of the legacies that we live today of the colonial separate colonial genocide. i encourage everybody in the audience to reflect individually on how they can develop their own approach to engaging with the consequences of of the force removals of the genocide and develop their own living land acknowledgment practices. that will make us a better society now, i would like to go to our questions. i will group questions to buy two because some of them are more information requiring and some of them are really asking our speakers to reflect first question comes from anonymous participant asking what do you mean by lenovo king as opposed to justin the second question comes from lauren asking what efforts are in place to include

the history of the offline hooking into new york state curriculum. for a mentor and secondary schools joe joy you are mutate. sorry. thank you. okay. now now i have a voice so i i'm happy to share with you regarding new york state curriculum there have been great outreach efforts made by individual teachers to lenape center requesting a more truthful and honest and thorough history of of linuppi presence in the homeland other than that cursory performity sort of set of you know set curriculum that exists today. so there seems to be a new openness for the expansion of

the curriculum and it is being driven not by the newark state department of education so much as it's being driven by the individual and courageous courageous efforts of individual teachers. tv if i if i made with i'm looking at the chat bar over here, there are so many questions. yeah. look, i think we only have it a limited amount of time left on this on this webinar. i would encourage people to take their questions and email them either to to the library. or i'll give you the email address for lanape center, which is simply lenape center at gmail.com all one word lenape center @gmail.com many of these questions they're great ones, but we just don't have enough time to cover it all perhaps if

you send those in and we can write more essays we can create more exhibits we can address these things in the in the months and actually years to come because they're the same questions. we asked ourselves as we began to return back to the homeland. thank you. 30 indeed any excellent questions and it would be a pity to not be able to engage with them if you given the energy of the discussion, i would suggest and given that the audience is still holding to for us to attempt to answer a few more questions if you don't mind, are you are you okay with that? okay, the next question comes from jess. i would like to know what is the best way for black people who are settlers in and let out behold king to both support the lenape people's efforts towards reclaiming their land and offer reparations. i am a plant worker building collective liberation in my practices and believe i owe

adapt to the land and to the lenoper people question number four from jared. how is how are the monthly related to the lineup again? i mean formation anybody would like to reflect on these two? heather do you want to mention about the differentiating between what's known as lent muncie and what's known as lenape that both the and the community identity? if you try i sometimes get them confused, but you'll correct me if i'm wrong. okay. so um, so muncie is a part of the lanape, but it's a language dialect. well and within that there are other dialects like there's i forget them, but there's other dialects and so like when i refer to muncie i refer to the

language when i'm talking about the people i say the linape so that's that's my clear understanding. i feel very much put on the spot right there, but that's okay and then just really quick to i to the to the person who mentioned, you know, there are there are black person working in the land. that's awesome. thank you so much. i would encourage you to reach out to soulfire farm, which is a farm here in the hudson valley that they are an afro indigenous farm and they do some really amazing work and they have done really good about making sure that they are paying homage and respect to the land and you can find them. i think it's just literally soul firefarm.com or soulfire.com, but if you put it into google you'll find them, but i think that's really cool. and i also, you know, just wanted to say, you know, i see you and i acknowledge you and thank you so much for that. you know, i acknowledge your past.

ancestors hardships, and so thank you for honoring for honoring mine as well. thank you. thank you very much. and and let me just say that we too at lenape center are working on the land in partnership with farmhub up on the hudson river valley to return ancestral seeds to the ancestral land. we're in our third season and there's upcoming programming that will be a part of the exhibition will not be hoking. that will really be very specific. to address those topics of of land and farming that are you know the food ways of not only the lenape but other people indigenous people of the area. and for the african-american community the origins of your story and colonialism are very

similar to to the lenape and to the indigenous people here in the homeland because that christian doctrine of discovery also extended to the african continent and many. of the native or indigenous people of the african continent were taken into slavery and brought to the americas and i'm talking about north south and central america to become again a working slave class of people so i think the african-american community and the native american community collectively can not only share stories. of the effects of colonialism, but what we are doing today to revive our identity and address racism and colonialism that still exists in public policy.

we cannot deny that it's still going on. and therefore we can work collectively to change thinking and institutions in the decades to come and try to overcome what has happened in the past. it's an ongoing effort. thank you, and our final two questions if you don't mind the following the first one from rosemary, would you speak would you speak a little bit about the reclamation process of lineup languages? what what do you feel are the prospects for those languages to become live languages that are spoken daily currently in communities and the last question comes from j flood who's asking what books online out the history. would you recommend yourself? well, i can i can address that last question regarding what books there's a lot of

information available not of not all of it is accurate or can be recommended but what i do recommend for everyone in this audience to to be sure and watch for the publication of this anthology, which should be published during the month of june which will become a very rich resource for the public and for educators and it's really one of the first publications that it includes community voices voices from the directly from the community not the accommendations or the scholars, but community voices, so that's going to become an important new resource that we can recommend. it will not be center. and with regards to language. let me just say this language is the foundation of all things culture. and many people believe that the

lenape or modern delaware's have lost their culture. they've lost their language. we've lost a lot of traditional knowledge, but we've not lost our language. and thanks to the efforts of so many people some of who are still living today. for instance with my tribe the delaware tribe of indians. we actually have a website called talk lenape.org. and on that is language stories the voices of now deceased tribal elders pronouncing words telling stories. we have classes going on with the delaware indian tribe right now in oklahoma. we are learning. from it's kind of like a trail of breadcrumbs that are ancestors and many of our elders have left for us to go back and

follow that trail and go back to the origins of our culture and language and we now have a group of young people right here in my community called young lenape a leaders who are using our language website and bringing back some of our social dances and our cultural gatherings what we can speak in our language. so as long as we have our language, that's the foundation of promoting our culture and we are engaged in a very robust effort to keep that going the muncie language the muncie dialect. which is more in the northern tribes up there and in wisconsin and canada, they also have they still have traditional speakers and elders, but they have a growing group of young people who are taken over. as the cultural leaders and it's all based in. speaking their language so we don't have everything we used to

have but we're on this path of reclaiming it. strengthen our identity and to strengthen our commitment to returning to the homeland and growing our the return of our identity. i'm speaking very passionately about it now because it is a sacred endeavor that we do as as a gift of appreciation an expression of appreciation for the sacrifices of our ancestors that gave that to us in spite of the worst conditions ever in our history. and and with that you can learn more about it. again in this anthology that joe spoke about but also in visiting places like the website portland up a center and see our ongoing efforts. and let me just say there's nothing like being able to speak the few words that i know.

on the land that knows that language. it's powerful the land never forgets. it's very powerful. and it and it connects the generations one of the coolest things going on with me right now with regards to our lineup a language. i'm texting my 16 year old granddaughter in lenape and she replies inlandape. lenape. that's me is really cool. that's awesome. well, i would like to thank our wonderful speakers heather curtis and joe for sharing their knowledge sharing their histories sharing their passion with us today, and i would like to thank the audience for your being so engaged i apologize for us not having the opportunity to answer all your questions, but i hope that will be the seed of of your reaching for the phone and

for your writing emails to the line upper center and to heather google to to continue this conversation. i would also like to thank our generous hosts that brooklyn public library and the brooklyn public library center for brooklyn history for hosting us today and passing the word to marshall. and i just want to echo tv and think all of you for such a spectacular way too brief beginning of a conversation. i've never really seen so much engagement in the questions that come in since really we started with virtual programs when covid began. so from my heart an enormous. thank you, and i want to tell everybody. because a number of questions have come in about the anthology that has been mentioned that

that anthology is in process now and the the best way to to know when it will be published and how you can get it your hands on it is to visit the website pages. the will not be hooking website pages on the brooklyn public libraries website, which will go into the chat. there it is and you'll get updates there. you'll also be able to explore all the upcoming programs. some of them came up already in this conversation. there'll be a program about missing and murdered indigenous women. we have a program about the myth of the purchase of manhattan. these are some of the questions that i saw you all asking as joe mentioned those there's a conversation coming down the pike about seeing remediation. we have poetry performances and many other conversations. so, please look for those and

join us for those but most importantly. thank you. all for being our audience. thank you for engaging and thank you. heather joe curtis tv for you know such a moving and powerful first launch of of this series. i wish a wonderful nig you can watch the programs anytime. veterans from world war two through the iraq war have tol their stories and recorded oral history interviews. here's an excerpt from one

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