Fourth Annual Munsee Language and History Symposium: Widening the Circle: Lunaape Land, Language, and History

This year’s gathering includes a session on wampum belts and their role in the making and maintenance of treaty obligations and responsibilities, centered on the wampum belt from Munsee-Delaware Nation currently housed at the American Museum of Natural History; a visit to Princeton University Library’s Special Collections to examine and discuss land transfer documents (deeds) that reflect interactions of settlers and Indigenous inhabitants of Lunaapahkiing (also “Lenapehokink,” the traditional Lunaape lands that correspond to present-day New Jersey, southern New York, and eastern Pennsylvania); two sessions on Lunaape Belongings, bringing out the ways in which communities connect with their belongings currently held in museums in North America and Europe, and how Lunaapeew are represented in museum spaces; a roundtable of updates on Lunaape language reclamation and revitalization from language-keepers in the various communities, both Munsee and Unami-speaking, as well as updates on the development of an online Munsee dictionary. The gathering closes with the sharing of versions of the Lunaape Delaware Creation Story, and a wider discussion of Lunaape Story.

Sponsors:
Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton
Land, Language, and Art: A Humanities Council Global Initiative
Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship
Princeton Public Library
School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study