<aside> <img src="/icons/suit-heart_gray.svg" alt="/icons/suit-heart_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Mabuhi, I’m a queer SEA witch sewing chaos in Lënapehòking, Turtle Island.
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I acknowledge I am a settler that was raised on Lënapehòking, the homelands of the Lenape people. Lënapehòking includes parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
After the death of William Penn in 1718, his sons John and Thomas did a complete 180 in their relationship with the Lenape, often selling the land without the consent of the local tribes. Then came the Walking Purchase, a deal struck in 1737 with the Lenape people by Penn’s sons, in which the Lenape agreed to sell to the Penn family as much land as a man could walk in a day and a half. The Penn family produced an alleged treaty from 1686 that showed the Lenape had already agreed to sell the land even though they could not produce an original copy of the deed, nor does the sale appear in Pennsylvania’s provincial land records. Penn’s descendants then tricked the tribe by hiring fast runners to mark the territory, instead of walkers, forcing the tribe to cede far more land than they had wished. The Lenape refused to leave, and eventually Pennsylvania colonial officials called on the Iroquois to force them out in 1741. In the 1860’s the United States Indian removal policy relocated other self-governing Lenape people against their will to designated Indian Territory in Oklahoma under the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Today federal- and state-recognized Lenape groups live in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Delaware, and New Jersey. Other Lenape people are not recognized by federal or state governments. As stated by Curtis Zunigha, then cultural director of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, “It is a history of deprivations, of swindles, of murders, of dishonorable behavior by the Dutch, by the British, and later by the Americans. We have been away from our homeland since that time, and yet we have persevered and managed to reorganize and reassemble ourselves”.
I acknowledge the Lenape people as the original and only true sovereigns of this land and express my gratitude for their past, present, and future role as caretakers of these lands. As a settler and pre-colonial reconstructivist of my own indigenous practices, this is a call to action to honor and stand with the Lenape people to reclaim stolen homes, families, and culture.
A recovering rén kuàng seeking true laziness. A future ancestor with a life is dedicated to all who have come before me to further uplift all I’ll never meet. My main modes of craft lay in embroidery and ink. On the rare occasions I'm outside, you'll find me wandering tea rooms, libraries, or cemeteries.
My life studies involve fashion history, social ecology, and death; though to keep it simple, I just say I love ✶.✧anthropology✧.✶.