Lenapehoking: The History of Lenape Forced Removals
In this panel discussion commemorating the 2022 Lenapehoking exhibition at Brooklyn Public Library, the Lenape Center’s Curtis Zunigha and Joe Baker, and Indigenous historian Heather Bruegl discuss forced removals of the Lenape people from their northeastern homeland. Moderated by Dr. Tibi Galis, Executive Director of the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities.
Lenapehoking is the Lenape name for the Lenape homeland, which spans from Western Connecticut to Eastern Pennsylvania, and the Hudson Valley to Delaware, with New York City at its center. During the panel, hear Baker on his family’s experience of forced removal to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Bruegl on the Stockbridge-Munsee forced removal to Wisconsin, and Zunigha will describe the pre-settler colonialism map of Lenapehoking, tracing the scattering of the Nation to present day locations including 3 communities in the U.S. and 2 communities in Canada.
This program is presented in partnership with the Lenape Center and as a collaboration between BPL Presents and BPL’s Center for Brooklyn History.
Participants
Curtis Zunigha is co-founder and co-director of The Lenape Center, based in New York City, which promotes the history and culture of the Lenape people (also known as Delaware Indians) through the arts, humanities, social identity, and environmental activism. His multimedia experience includes writing, producing, directing, acting, narrating, and composing/performing traditional music. Zunigha is an accomplished public speaker, workshop facilitator, and panel moderator. He is known throughout Indian Country as a master of ceremonies at cultural performances and events.
Joe Baker is an artist, educator, curator and activist who has been working in the field of Native Arts for the past thirty years. He is an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and co-founder executive director of Lenape Center in Manhattan. Baker is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work in New York and was recently Visiting Professor of Museum Studies at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado. He serves as a board member for The Endangered Language Fund, Yale University and on the Advisory Committee for the National Public Art Consortium, New York and cultural advisor for the new CBS Series, “Ghosts.”
Baker has guided in his capacity as executive director for Lenape Center partnerships with the Metropolitan Museum of Art (his work is currently on exhibit there), Brooklyn Museum of Art, American Ballet Theater, Moulin Rouge on Broadway, The Whitney Museum of Art, and others. In partnership with Farm Hub in the Hudson River Valley, Baker and Lenape Center are championing the return of ancestral seeds in the homeland through a seed rematriation project. This seed saving project, now in its second year, has done much to contribute to the cultural foodways of the Lenape diaspora. In partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library, Baker is the curator of the first ever Lenape exhibition of cultural arts in the City of New York, opening January 2021. Baker graduated from the University of Tulsa with a BFA degree in Design and an MFA in painting and drawing, and completed postgraduate study, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, MDP Program.
Heather Bruegl, a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and first line descendent Stockbridge Munsee, is a graduate of Madonna University in Michigan and holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in U.S. History. Inspired by a trip to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, a passion for Native American History was born. She has spoken for numerous groups including the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the College of the Menominee Nation. She has spoken at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh for Indigenous Peoples Day 2017. Heather also opened and spoke at the Women’s March Anniversary in Lansing, Michigan in January 2018. She also spoke at the first ever Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, DC in January of 2019. In the summer 2019, virtually in 2020 and in 2021, she spoke at the Crazy Horse Memorial and Museum in Custer, South Dakota for their Talking Circle Series. She has also become the ‘’accidental activist’’ and speaks to different groups about intergenerational racism and trauma and helps to bring awareness to our environment, the fight for clean water and other issues in the Native community. A curiosity of her own heritage led her to Wisconsin, where she has researched the history of the Native American tribes in the area. She is the former Director of Cultural Affairs for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and now serves at the Director of Education for Forge Project. In addition to that she also currently travels and speaks on Native American history, including policy and activism.
Dr. Tibi Galis has been the Executive Director of the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (www.auschwitzinstitute.org) since 2006. Born and raised in Romania, he earned his B.A. in Law and Political Science from Babes-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca. He received an M.A. in International Politics and Political Development from the University of Manchester and earned a Ph.D. from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, with a focus on transitional justice. Previously, Dr. Galis worked as an Associate Researcher for the UK Parliament, helping develop the UK position on the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and as rapporteur for the Swedish government at the 2004 Stockholm International Forum on the Prevention of Genocide.
Talks like this continue throughout the Lenapehoking exhibition, which runs from Jan 20 through April 30. Program calendar here.
To view the exhibition website, please go here.
Lenapehoking is made possible in part with support from the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.
In this panel discussion commemorating the 2022 Lenapehoking exhibition at Brooklyn Public Library, the Lenape Center’s Curtis Zunigha and Joe Baker, and Indigenous historian Heather Bruegl discuss forced removals of the Lenape people from their northeastern homeland. Moderated by Dr. Tibi Galis, Executive Director of the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities.
Lenapehoking is the Lenape name for the Lenape homeland, which spans from Western Connecticut to Eastern Pennsylvania, and the Hudson Valley to Delaware, with New York City at its center. During the panel, hear Baker on his family’s experience of forced removal to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Bruegl on the Stockbridge-Munsee forced removal to Wisconsin, and Zunigha will describe the pre-settler colonialism map of Lenapehoking, tracing the scattering of the Nation to present day locations including 3 communities in the U.S. and 2 communities in Canada.
This program is presented in partnership with the Lenape Center and as a collaboration between BPL Presents and BPL’s Center for Brooklyn History.
Participants
Curtis Zunigha is co-founder and co-director of The Lenape Center, based in New York City, which promotes the history and culture of the Lenape people (also known as Delaware Indians) through the arts, humanities, social identity, and environmental activism. His multimedia experience includes writing, producing, directing, acting, narrating, and composing/performing traditional music. Zunigha is an accomplished public speaker, workshop facilitator, and panel moderator. He is known throughout Indian Country as a master of ceremonies at cultural performances and events.
Joe Baker is an artist, educator, curator and activist who has been working in the field of Native Arts for the past thirty years. He is an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and co-founder executive director of Lenape Center in Manhattan. Baker is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work in New York and was recently Visiting Professor of Museum Studies at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado. He serves as a board member for The Endangered Language Fund, Yale University and on the Advisory Committee for the National Public Art Consortium, New York and cultural advisor for the new CBS Series, “Ghosts.”
Baker has guided in his capacity as executive director for Lenape Center partnerships with the Metropolitan Museum of Art (his work is currently on exhibit there), Brooklyn Museum of Art, American Ballet Theater, Moulin Rouge on Broadway, The Whitney Museum of Art, and others. In partnership with Farm Hub in the Hudson River Valley, Baker and Lenape Center are championing the return of ancestral seeds in the homeland through a seed rematriation project. This seed saving project, now in its second year, has done much to contribute to the cultural foodways of the Lenape diaspora. In partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library, Baker is the curator of the first ever Lenape exhibition of cultural arts in the City of New York, opening January 2021. Baker graduated from the University of Tulsa with a BFA degree in Design and an MFA in painting and drawing, and completed postgraduate study, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, MDP Program.
Heather Bruegl, a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and first line descendent Stockbridge Munsee, is a graduate of Madonna University in Michigan and holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in U.S. History. Inspired by a trip to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, a passion for Native American History was born. She has spoken for numerous groups including the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the College of the Menominee Nation. She has spoken at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh for Indigenous Peoples Day 2017. Heather also opened and spoke at the Women’s March Anniversary in Lansing, Michigan in January 2018. She also spoke at the first ever Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, DC in January of 2019. In the summer 2019, virtually in 2020 and in 2021, she spoke at the Crazy Horse Memorial and Museum in Custer, South Dakota for their Talking Circle Series. She has also become the ‘’accidental activist’’ and speaks to different groups about intergenerational racism and trauma and helps to bring awareness to our environment, the fight for clean water and other issues in the Native community. A curiosity of her own heritage led her to Wisconsin, where she has researched the history of the Native American tribes in the area. She is the former Director of Cultural Affairs for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and now serves at the Director of Education for Forge Project. In addition to that she also currently travels and speaks on Native American history, including policy and activism.
Dr. Tibi Galis has been the Executive Director of the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (www.auschwitzinstitute.org) since 2006. Born and raised in Romania, he earned his B.A. in Law and Political Science from Babes-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca. He received an M.A. in International Politics and Political Development from the University of Manchester and earned a Ph.D. from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, with a focus on transitional justice. Previously, Dr. Galis worked as an Associate Researcher for the UK Parliament, helping develop the UK position on the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and as rapporteur for the Swedish government at the 2004 Stockholm International Forum on the Prevention of Genocide.
Talks like this continue throughout the Lenapehoking exhibition, which runs from Jan 20 through April 30. Program calendar here.
To view the exhibition website, please go here.