Author name: Mikie

It goes almost without saying – but I’ll say it anyway – that all the land in New Jersey once belonged to the Indigenous people who lived here for millennia before European colonization. After 400 years of wars, treaties, forced removals and migrations, and unfair government policies, little land in this state remains under Native American control.
That’s why a Sept. 15 “rematriation” ceremony in Quinton Township, Salem County, was such an extraordinary and happy event. The ancient Cohanzick people, part of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Nation, were reunited with a piece of Mother Earth where their ancestors once lived.

You may also find Chief Vincent Mann, Turtle Clan Chief of the Ramapough Luunape Nation along the banks of the river. Mann is at the forefront of New Jersey’s environmental justice movement and operates a nonprofit farm used for both sustenance and to recover the Ramapough Luunape’s cultural farming practices. Seemingly with more than 24 hours in a day, Mann has also been instrumental in restoring and preserving the Musconetcong Wild and Scenic River and his tribe’s ancestral land surrounding the river.

The New Jersey Council for the Humanities (NJCH) has announced the recipient of the inaugural Stanley N. Katz Prize for Excellence in Public Humanities, as well as two honorable mentions.

“The Ramapough and the Ringwood Mines Superfund Site – History, Culture, Education, and Environmental Justice,” was awarded the top prize at NJCH’s 50th Anniversary Gala on September 29. The multimedia project, headed by Anita Bakshi of the Rutgers University Department of Landscape Architecture, promotes environmental justice advocacy and curriculum development on Native American history and contemporary Indigenous land relations and was co-created with the Ramapough Lunaape Nation Turtle Clan.

On paper, the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm in Sussex County looks like a start-up business, but at its heart, it’s a charity with the goal of feeding, healing and sustaining members of the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lenape Nation. Munsee Three Sisters is one of several new endeavors supported by the Foodshed Alliance’s affordable farmland leasing program on preserved land, known as the Sustainable Agriculture Enterprise (SAgE). “The farm is there because it’s needed,” said Michaeline Picaro, who co-founded it with the clan’s chief, Vincent Mann. “Our community needs to be a caring community, centered around healthy food and healing. This is our life, our vision.”