Website. Charter communications, along with these Television Company supports cspan2 as a public service. Hello everyone, welcome to tonights program and thank you so much for being here. My name is marsha eli, i come to you from the center for brooklyn history Brooklyn Public Library and vpl presents, which is the librarys arts and culture are that brings you so many programs and conversations like tonight as well as unicode performances family and childrens events tonights program the history of aa available as one part of a much larger and far ranging initiative that vpl is honored to be presenting in partnership with what the wisdom and leadership of aacenter titled aathis Initiative Includes new yorks first ever agape curated exhibition of monopoly Cultural Arts which is now on view at bpl screen Point LibraryEnvironmental Education center as well as many future programs eand topics like the myth of the purchase of manhattan seal emaciation poetry readings and an upcoming published anthology of essays on blowoff a history its quite ambitious. Its truly my honor to introduce tonights discussion on their behalf. In a few moments, you will hear three perspectives on history that has too edlong been overlooked misrepresented and lied about. For 10,000 years they lived in a hokey area that includes parts of what are now the states of pennsylvania connecticut new york and delaware and fairways often brutally forced migrations forced removal this first nation was dispersed to locations from oklahoma to wisconsin to parts for the north and west. Before introduce tonight 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. 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 its my honor to introduce our speakers and turn it over to them. The multimedia experience includes writing producing directing acting narrating and confusing and traditional music. Joe baker and his artist educator curator and activist whos worked in the field of native arts through the past 30 years and enrolled member of the delaware tribe of indians of oklahoma and cofounder and executive director of the lid off a center. Is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University school of social work k and was recently visiting professor of using studies at Carlisle College and joe aaheather bruegel is indigenous historian and citizen of the nation of wisconsin and firstline defendant stockbridge muncie. In addition to her tmany speaking engagements, she had become the accidental activist speaking to groups about intergenerational racism and trauma helping to build awareness for clean water and other issues in native communities she is the former director of Cultural Affairs and stockbridge Muncie Community and now heather serves as the director of education for forge project. The moderator today doctor tibialis has been the executive director Auschwitz Institute for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities since 2000. Formatted raised in romania, doctor gals previously worked as an associate researcher for the Uk Parliament when he helped develop the uk positions on the un special advisor on the prevention of genocide. Welcome to you all, i am not going to turn this over to curtis for welcome on behalf of a¦ good evening everyone and welcome to this amazing webinar and i am a codirector of what abe center as mentioned arts and culture that man had prevailed in the beginning but now we cover the entirety of monopoly hokey, the land of the lord will not pay the original homeland which extends all the way up to the foothills of the catskill mountains and all the way down the Delaware River to include eastern pennsylvania and new jersey emptying into the dollar. Those of the original homeland so its amazing we are a part of this webinar this evening and on behalf of the what abe center and speaking as one abe man i welcome you to this place called what abe hokey and we are very glad that you are here with us this evening from wherever you are joining us. Thank you. I would like to cowelcome everyone and also recognize talking today from from the land of the original people of the landgrant speaking to you today. I would also like to start by recognizing that the organization that i have the joy to lead i would also like to recognize that the monopoly deep connection to the. As an organization dedicated to trust and would like to invite all of us to open our hearts to learning about the history of our land and history of the people of the farland. I would like to invite curtis to start us off in this discussion. Curtis, you have the floor. I was asked to write an essay about what was originally called the first migration of the day. I ended up writing a lengthy essay but my approach was to get away from the term of migration or diaspora weve 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 began, first it began with the italian explorer sailing for the french followed 100 years later by the hudson. Sailing for the Dutch East India Company trying to explore routes for the for trade. Upon encountering monopoly people there are numerous stories and accounts written by explorers, military leaders, missionaries and other colonia settlers that talked about the one abe people. As a strong and into people with the culture and belief system that in some ways actually were much akin to some of the aaabove all, we have a deep spiritual relationship with the land. So when we talk about being removed from the homeland, the homeland of the original copy people come up to me and my extension to so many of our people, to me its like being an orphan like someone whos been taken away from the arms of her mother and taken away far away to where we cannot see out there ryanymore. There is a long history that goes all the way from original contact in the early 16th century to the late 19th century and today the one abe people are broken up in the various groups and today their names include the name delaware. Thats the colonial name. I am a member of the delaware tribe of indians stop thats our colonial name delaware. It actually came from a British Colonial governor sir thomas west. Now the one abe people became known as the delaware throughout this historic period of time but as we encountered more and more of the europeans the hedutch followed by the british and ultimately the americans as a hunger for more land and opportunity to have a free and independent land to live on, they displace the original people who were already free and independent People Living on the land. Our stories and much of what you will see in this exhibit will tell our story of how we were forced away from our homeland and in an environment in a water if you listen to the news or watch the news and see about other countries and people being displaced in their own country in the fear of war, thats what the letter abe went through. This exhibit will not only tell that story shes a trail of force removal where today the lenape todays modern descendants known as the delaware my tribe and im an enrolled member of the delaware tribe. Were located in northeastern, oklahoma, and weve 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 collectively, we are the descendents of the original lenape. We are like different branches from the same tree trunk but the treetrunk is rooted firmly in the homeland, and now with Lenape Center and ive been involved for over ten years now with monopoly center, i feel like that orphan child who has come back, back to new york, back to monopoly hoping, to connect with my mother, the motherland, the homeland, the original homeland lenape pickett is that deep Spiritual Connection with the land, the waters, the ancestors. Its never gone away and thanks to Lenape Center enter friendships and partnerships weve made with such institutions as the broken library and the center for brooklyn history. People are making away from the lenape to return to her homeland, and in doing so and by telling our story people learned that we still exist. There was so much erasure of our history and our culture and our language and our presence in trying to come erasure done by centuries, by decades the people who took over the land, most often times by force or by fraud. And basically wrote the lenape out of the history. But monopoly center and her friends with the Brooklyn Library, we are here to tell you we never died out. We are still here and we are grateful that weow can come back to the homeland now and connect with the spirit of our homeland. End in doing so we continue to generation, the generational connection, after all of these centuries back with the homeland, and that is extremely gratifyingit, ever culture and language and we pay honor to the sacrifices of our ancestors. And gift of the culture and language which we still have and that is passed down to us, and we will continue to grow back in lenaphoking and assert our presence and assert a claim to her homeland that we never willingly gave up. I hope you all will earn more about the Lenape Center but we do have a website called the Lenape Center. Com and you will find a lot of incredible information about the growth and development of our organization, not only the work weve done, we are an arts and Cultural Organization the. 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 monopoly people are no longer orphans. We have returned to our mother, and her mother is opening her arms and welcoming us back. And we also, by working with various organizations in lenapehoking, we are taking our place back at the table of power, and we bring traditional knowledge and at incredible culture and language that only enriches the entire fabric of that which is lenapehoking, that which is new york city, that which is theok 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 lenapehoking. I want to share this time with them to provide additional perspectives, and i encourage you to look throughout all of the activities thats going on here with the greenPoint Library of brooklyn, the center for brooklyn history, and you will only see much more bigger and better presence of the Lenape Center in the years to come. So with that, i say thank you spirit and now we will turn to heather and joe, and after that we will open the discussion based on the questions that you all in the audience are sending as we are starting the conversation. Now i would like too invite heather to join the discussion here heather. Hi, thank you so much. My name and our language is sunflower in full bloom. I had my naming ceremony in the middle of the pandemic in septemberer of 2020. Im very honored to be part of this panel thiss evening. Thank you to joe and curtis for the continued learning. Thank you to the Brooklyn Public Library and to the center for brooklyn history. Im so honored to be here. I am coming to you from the homeland of the people of the waters that were never still. Today there known as the Monthly Community and they are in wisconsin. Im very honored to be able to be coming here from the homeland spirit i moved here in october of last year from wisconsin here prior to that i was living on the homelands in southeastern michigan. I work for number of years for the community and now im here in upstate new york. Actually i met in upstate new york trip and technically i guess that in the middle apparently i was wrong the whole time but thats okay. Just you know in the homeland you and if so honored to be part of this panel. I wanted to start with this, this is one of my favorite quotes. Lakota activist john trudell were not indians and were not native americans. Were older than both concepts. Where the people where the human beings . I think thats a really powerful to stop and think about that. Were older than both of those concepts. We are the human beings. When i hear that i think about how wouldnt 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. Im 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 ill 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 im in the homelands now that ive had the opportunity to come home. I cant help when im 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 were older than the tales told by james bentmore cooper. He got it very wrong. Its a very beautiful movie. Im not gonna lie to cinematography is great, but its not accurate and its 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 dont call it that river. Its the mahikhana attack because thats 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 were no longer mohican. Were no longer pequot. Were no longer narragansett. Were no longer one night up because for some reason its 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 weve 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. Im not gonna lie to you. I love early colonial history. I find it very fascinating. Im like the worlds biggest nerd when it comes to this and i can receive it word for word. But what we dont 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 washingtons, 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 were 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 were moved again and this time were 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