Teaching Lenape History & Presence in New York City Schools

The Brooklyn Public Library, in collaboration with the Lenape Center, presents a talk to introduce and discuss a new Lenape curriculum developed for PK-12 students.

This curriculum aims to bring Indigenous history to life and address the often overlooked narrative of the Lenape people in New York City. The talk features key contributors to the curriculum project, including Rachel Talbert from Teachers College, Columbia University; Joe Baker, Executive Director of Lenape Center and Hadrien Coumans, Deputy Director of Lenape Center.

Adapted in part from the Lenape Center’s Lenapehoking Anthology, the Lenape curriculum is designed for students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, with four different installments tailored to specific age groups. It aims to provide a comprehensive and age-appropriate approach to teaching Lenape history and culture.

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PARTICIPANTS

Joe Baker, enrolled member of Delaware Tribe of Indians, is a direct line descendent of notable Lenape leaders, including Simon Whiteturkey, Captain Anderson Sarcoxie (Treaty of Greenville 1795), Captain White Eyes (Treaty of Fort Pitt 1778), Netawatwees or King Newcomer (Treaty of Conestoga 1763), Tamanend, King Tammany (1625-1701), Chief Nutimus (signed the confirmation deed, Walking Purchase 1737).
Baker is co-founder, executive director of Lenape Center in Manhattan, and an artist, educator, and curator who has been working in the field of Native Arts for the past 30 years. Baker is an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, in New York, and was recently Visiting Professor of Museum Studies at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 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.

Deputy Director and Co-founder Hadrien Coumans’s work is centered in empowerment, cultural continuance, genocide healing, and prevention. He serves in the areas of strategic partnerships, advocacy, fundraising, initiatives, production and development. Faculty, Associate, Department of Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, he is a traditionally adopted member of the WhiteTurkey-Fugate family. 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Rachel Talbert, Teachers College Columbia University is a lecturer in the Curriculum and Teaching department and Research Fellow at TC’s Gordon Institute for Advanced Studies. Her teaching and research center survivance (Vizenor, 2008) an active sense of Native presence over absence. She is committed to a curriculum that supports all students learning about Native American sovereignty and self determination. Her community engaged scholarship focuses on curriculum development with the Lenape Center in NYC and seeks to understand the impact of PreK-12 Lenape curriculum centering sovereignty and survivance on students, and what curricular supports teachers in public schools in NYC need to move toward unsettling as meaningful decolonial praxis. Her research with urban Indigenous youth in public schools focuses on civic identity negotiation and its relationship to Tribal sovereignty and self-determination. In addition to research, Rachel teaches classes for Masters students in curriculum theory and technology integration as well as a course for advanced masters and doctoral students titled Indigenous Curriculum & Teaching: Sustaining Survivance through Theory & Practice.