This Indigenous Peoples Day, Prospect Park is honoring the history and resilience of the land’s first inhabitants through a powerful blend of art, storytelling and celebration in Brooklyn.
The Prospect Park Alliance and the Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing Collective (EL Collective) have joined forces to present “Eelunaapéewi Ehaptoonáakanal: Voices of Lunáapeew/Lenape,” a new video exhibition at the Lefferts Historic House running through Nov. 30.
The exhibit, part of the ReImagine Lefferts initiative, features “video interviews with Lunáapeew/Lenape knowledge-keepers and culture bearers about their relationships to their ancestral homelands.”
George Stonefish, co-founder of the EL Collective and advisor for ReImagine Lefferts said the exhibit is meant to increase public understanding of the Lenape.
“We are a nation who has been scattered to the winds because of the greed of not just the Dutch, but also the English after that and so forth, who chased us and massacred us for out land,” he said. “I want people to understand who the Lenape were and are, and the things we’ve given to modern culture that aren’t acknowledged.”
The exhibit honors the Lunáapeew/Lenape, whose name means “the ones who came from thought.” Their ancestral homelands, known as Lenapehoking, encompass what is now Brooklyn and much of the surrounding areas. The exhibition explores both their deep spiritual connection to the land and their enduring fight to preserve their culture in the face of centuries of displacement and colonization.
“We are honored to join our partners at the EL Collective to share with our community the history, resistance and resilience of the Indigenous people of Lenapehoking, as well as the enduring art, culture and stories of the Lenapehoking today,” Morgan Monaco, president of the Prospect Park Alliance, said in a statement.
Last month, they celebrated the “first intertribal gathering since 1972 and the second-ever Lenape Pow Wow in New York City” at the United Lenape/Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow. Prospect Park was once the home of “regular” intertribal Pow Wows, and the reviving efforts are thanks to ReImagine Lefferts.
“New Yorkers are deeply interested in the original people of this land,” said Dylan Yeats, Ph.D., director of museum programs and operations at the Prospect Park Alliance. “This free and accessible exhibit offers audiences a chance to hear directly from the Lunáapeew or Lenape themselves about their histories, cultures, experiences and opinions.”
The “Voices of Lunáapeew” exhibition joins other installations at Lefferts Historic House, including “Ancestral Whispers” by Adama Delphine Fawnundu, which honors the lives of enslaved Africans once held by the Lefferts family.
