Resources for the Lunaape/Delaware Living Land Acknowledgement
Lunaape/Delaware Living Land Acknowledgement
The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, is situated on land that is the ancestral homeland of the Lunaapeewak (Lenape people) who were displaced by violent colonial actions that forced their relocation to the north and west. These peoples include five federally recognized communities, two located in Canada and three in the USA: the Munsee Delaware Nation (Muncey, Ontario); the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown (Moraviantown, Ontario); the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians (Bowler, Wisconsin); the Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, Oklahoma); and the Delaware Nation of Lenni Lenape (Anadarko, Oklahoma). State-recognized tribes in New Jersey include the Ramapough Munsee Lenape Nation, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation, and the Powhatan Renape Nation. This resource list aims to support the intellectual inquiry of the Lunaape community, as well as that of the Institute for Advanced Study community, and will include announcements of upcoming collaborations as well as (where appropriate) links to recordings of past collaborations. As members of the IAS community living on Lunaape land (Lunaapahkiing), we are grateful to be learning from and working with Lunaape partners, and hope to continue doing so in a good way.
Language Resources:
Lunaape/Lunaapeew Language
Lunaape (sometimes called "Delaware"), a language in the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family, is conventionally divided into three subgroups: Munsee, Northern Unami, and Southern Unami. Both Munsee (Huluníixsuwaakan) and Unami (Wënami èlixsuwakàn) continue to be spoken, and language resources for both dialects of Lunaape can be found on this page.
Online language resources
Munsee Delaware Grammar, http://munseedelaware.com/ Lunaapeew, Huluníixsuwaakan, Munsíiw, Delaware
Twitter https://twitter.com/ianmccallum3?lang=en
Unami resources:
For Southern Unami Dialect: Lenape Talking Dictionary, https://www.talk-lenape.org/
Resources available online
Online lectures on Munsee history by Chief Mark Peters, Munsee Delaware Nation:
https://www.publichistoryproject.org/category/chief-peters/
Grumet, Robert S. Beyond Manhattan: A Gazetteer of Delaware Indian History, Reflected in Modern-Day Place Names. New York State Museum Record 5, 2014. A more wide-ranging survey of place names. https://www.nysm.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/nysmrecord-vol5-1.pdf
Walling, Richard S. “Locating a Lenape Landscape: Tatamy's Swamp, West Windsor Township, Mercer County, New Jersey.” Communipaw Consulting, 2012. https://www.westwindsorhistory.com/uploads/1/2/3/1/123111196/locating_a_lenape_landscape_-_tatamys_swamp.pdf
Armstrong, April C. “George Morgan White Eyes, Racial Theory at Princeton, and Student Financial Aid in the Eighteenth Century.” Mudd Manuscript Library Blog: News from the Princeton University Archives & Public Policy Papers Collection. 2 September 2020. https://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2020/09/george-morgan-white-eyes-racial-theories-at-princeton-and-federal-student-aid-in-the-eighteenth-century/
- on Lee Maracle, Memory Serves: https://www.megaphonic.fm/spouter/23
- with Lee Maracle, on Dickens' Great Expectations: https://www.megaphonic.fm/spouter/29b
- on Lee Maracle, I Am Woman: https://www.megaphonic.fm/spouter/51
- on Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach: https://www.megaphonic.fm/spouter/35
- with Loretta Todd, director of Monkey Beach (film adaptation): https://www.megaphonic.fm/spouter/35b
- on Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: https://www.megaphonic.fm/spouter/43
- with Daniel Heath Justice, on his books Raccoon and Badger: https://www.megaphonic.fm/spouter/47b
- Daybreak, A Living Language, an Evening of Munsee Storytelling, https://share.transistor.fm/s/c194879c
"A Modern Delaware Tale" / J. Dyneley Prince
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , Jan., 1902, Vol. 41, No. 168
(Jan., 1902), pp. 20-34 Published by: American Philosophical Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/983519
Social dances of the Lenape and other North Eastern Indian Tribes / from the Delaware Tribe of Indians.
- Native Land Digital, information for living land acknowledgements https://native-land.ca/
- WHYY's article and map, "We just want to be welcomed back", the Lenape seek a return home.
- New Netherlands, with a view of New Amsterdam, now New York, A.D. 1656
- Novi Belgii Novaeque Angliae : nec non partis Virginiae tabula multis in locis emendata 1682
- Map of 1700 East and West Jersey
- New Jersey 1795 Guthrie's Geography map
Theresa Stewart-Ambo, K. Wayne Yang; Beyond Land Acknowledgment in Settler Institutions. Social Text 1 March 2021; 39 (1 (146)): 21–46. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-8750076
Books available on campus (some also through Open Library)
Books available on the Institute campus through the HS-SS Library, collection code LLAC. They will be on a shelf by the entrance to the oversize room on the main floor and may be borrowed. Books available through Open Library may be read online after creating an account.
Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian . Yale University, 1998, 2022 with new preface. E98.P99D45 2022. "This book explores how white Americans have used their ideas about Native Americans to shape national identity in different eras..." detail from back cover. Open Library https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2703902W/Playing_Indian?edition=key%3A/books/OL684144M
Ellis, Elizabeth N. The Great Power of Small Nations : Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023. E78.M75E45 2023. This title begins with the present-day Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe of Louisiana and explores how have they been able to retain portions of their homeland. The book examines the political systems of the various nations and what made them strong during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Grumet, Robert S. The Munsee Indians: A History. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2009. E99.M93G78 2009. Probably the best overview of Munsee (that is, speakers of the northern dialect of Lenape language; the southern dialect is Unami) history, with detailed notes.
Grumet, Robert S. First Manhattans: A History of the Indians of Greater New York. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2011. E99.M93G77 2011. A more reader-friendly and accessible overview of Munsee history, drawn in large part from Grumet’s 2009 The Munsee Indians.
Grumet, Robert S. From Manhattan to Minisink: American Indian Place Names in Greater New York and Vicinity. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2013. F117.G78 2013 Useful index with short descriptions of actual Indigenous place names, along with a shorter index of spurious “Indian” place names.
Grumet, Robert S. Beyond Manhattan : A Gazetteer of Delaware Indian History Reflected In modern-Day Place Names ; Munsee and Northern Unami Interpretations by
Ray Whritenou (related to the above title) http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/common/nysm/files/nysmrecord-vol5-1.pdf
McCallum, Mary Jane Logan. Nii Ndahlohke: Boys' and Girls' Work at Mount Elgin Residential School, 1890-1915 (Friesen Press, 2022) E96.5 .M33 2022
O'Meara, John. Delaware-English, English-Delaware Dictionary. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1996, 2014 reprint. PM1033.O43 1996
Less essential, but also useful:
Barker, Joanne. Red scare : the state's indigenous terrorist. University of California Press, 2021. E98.S67B37 2021
Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America : native peoples and the unmaking of U.S. History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. E77.B64 2023
Monkman, Kent. Being legendary at Royal Ontario Museum : confronting colonialism. Art Canada Institute, 2022. ND249.M568A4 2022
Schutt, Amy C. People of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2007. E99.D2S34 2007. Seventeenth and eighteenth-century history of the region, with a focus on Lenape alliances in the context of their displacement.
Simpson, Audra. Mohawk Interruptus : Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. E99.M8S56 2014. This is an ethnographic study of the Mohawks of Kahnawa:ke, a community in southwestern Quebec who are a part of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy. Simpson writes on their struggle to maintain political sovereignty.
Soderlund, Jean R. Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. F157.D4S68 2015. On early Delaware Valley history (seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries), including Swedish and Finnish settlement, as well as the consolidation of the Dutch and British settlement in the region.
Roeber, A.G. Ethnographies and Exchanges: Native Americans, Moravians, and Catholics in Early North America. University Park: Penn State UP, 2008. E98.M6E84 2008. Includes a few contributions on Moravian missions to Lenape communities displaced from Lenape territory to western Pennsylvania and beyond.