Category: Sustainability and Society

Learning Lenape: Connecting with Amerindian America as Princetonians

Author: Christian Hernandez ’22

Whenever people ask where I am from, I respond, “near Houston, Texas”. The responses that ensue generally mention something they’ve heard about the state or a stereotype related to cowboy hats, dry western range, or chili containing no beans. Only the last item on that list is true for my home city of Manvel: it’s wet and many people there (including myself) prefer ball caps. 

Benjamin West‘s painting (in 1771) of William Penn‘s 1682 treaty with the Lenape4

Likewise, many people, even students at Princeton, often apply uninformed, stereotypes to Amerindian tribes and their histories. With the exception of the information provided by Natives at Princeton, our knowledge of the tribes that originally lived in our region is simplified and secularized. For example, a recent MOL 350 syllabus briefly noted that Lenni Lenape people once owned university land, but it did not provide the contact info for the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape communities still in New Jersey today! If you ask when the Lenni-Lenape ancestors arrived in New Jersey, most would guess 10,000 years ago. However, the Lenni-Lenape didn’t enter Princeton until around the High Middle Ages!1 Two years ago, I wouldn’t have known that there is a disputed yet fascinating literary record of Lenni-Lenape migration from Siberia (the Walam Olam). How many of us know that American football’s first professional team2 was named after 7-10 ft giants called the Allegewi (Allegheny) that were enemies of the Lenni-Lenape people?3

If you want to help mitigate the general ignorance on this subject, I invite you to join me in connecting with some of the oldest Americans (the Lenape say the giants were another). The Here and Then initiative focuses on connecting students with the past and present reality of Amerindians. In terms of involvement, students read oral histories, learn about places and people, uncover local-familial Amerindian ties, and seek out Amerindians with us today. My ultimate aim is for each student to incorporate Amerindian ideas and culture into their daily lives. For me, this has included familiarizing myself with Ojibwe uses for plants, interpreting Hopi rock art, or creating a Cherokee timeline involving my Cherokee ancestors’ migrations from Mayan Mexico (granted my distant grandfather Solomon Lynch is the only such relative). 

Please contact me at cah11@princeton.edu or visit my website at www.restorationecoculture.com if you’d like to get involved or learn more. It is very free-style and readily adaptable to a Princeton schedule: it’s what I do instead of Netflix. I hope to continually provide posts on specific tribes or time periods here on the Tigers Go Green Blog as well. I’d be glad to welcome you into uncovering the hidden history of Amerindian America.

This 400-year-old maple tree in southwestern Wisconsin was a Kickapoo tribes council tree. PC: Christian Hernandez

Christian Hernandez ’22 is a member of the USG Sustainability Committee

References

  1. Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape. (2007). Our Tribal History. Retrieved November 14, 2020, from https://nanticoke-lenape.info/history.htm
  2.  P. (n.d.). Birth of Pro Football. Retrieved November 14, 2020, from https://www.profootballhof.com/football-history/birth-of-pro-football/
  3. EsoterX. (2015, July 24). The Lenape-Allegewi War: A Native American Titanomachy. Retrieved November 14, 2020, from https://esoterx.com/2015/07/19/the-lenape-allegewi-war-a-native-american-titanomachy/
  4. West, Benjamin. Penn’s Treaty with the Indianslabel QS:Len,”Penn’s Treaty with the Indians”. from  until 1772 date QS:P571,+1771- -00T00:00:00Z/8,P580,+1771-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P582,+1772-00-00T00:00:00Z/9 1771. State Museum of Pennsylvania, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Treaty_of_Penn_with_Indians_by_Benjamin_West.jpg.

Good News Friday 11/13/20

Author: Camellia Moors ‘22

Welcome to the third edition of our Good News Friday series! While it might be Friday the 13th, that’s no reason to focus on negative news. Here just a sample of some of the positive goings-on that have happened this week:

Image Credit: Pauline Askin for Reuters via Yale Environment 360
Image Credit: Dean Faulkner via ABC News
  • Australian Solar Power: South Australia recently became “the first major jurisdiction in the world to be powered entirely by solar energy.” For approximately an hour on Sunday, October 11, the state was able to meet all of its energy needs with a mix of rooftop and commercial solar power. While one hour might not sound like a lot, this test of solar power capacity lays the foundation for using even more solar power in the future and helps ease concerns about solar power reliability.
Image Credit: Geng Xue for Linggas via Inside Climate News
  • Reusing Greenhouse Gases: Linggas, a Chinese industrial gas company, recently demonstrated its method for capturing and purifying the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas) emitted by nylon manufacturing. Nitrous oxide’s global warming potential is approximately 300 times that of carbon dioxide and accounts for 7% of American annual total greenhouse gas emissions. This new mitigation method takes carbon (or, in this case, nitrogen) capture a step above what is normally expected, opening doors for the future of climate change mitigation.

Environmental news doesn’t always have to be doom and gloom. If you’d like to share some Good News with us, submit an article by contacting one of our Blog Editors.

Good News Friday 10/30/20

Author: Grace Liu ‘23

Welcome to the second edition of our Good News Friday series! Whether you’re excited about or dreading the results of the election, we can all use some good news. Here are a few happy happenings in the sustainability sphere to brighten up your week:

“Solar panels in the mist” by OregonDOT is licensed under CC BY 2.0
  1. China chooses carbon neutrality: In a surprising announcement at the annual UN climate meeting, President Xi Jinping committed China to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. This decision could lower global-warming projections by 0.3 degrees Celsius, the largest reduction ever estimated as the result of a policy change, according to Climate Action Tracker.  Every country that commits to carbon neutrality adds pressure on other nations to join this global effort. Currently, the US and India are two of the biggest economies outside of this committed carbon-neutrality group.

“Inside the Eelgrass beds” by eclectic echoes is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
  1. Seagrasses save ecosystems: As part of a 20-plus-years project, researchers and volunteers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and The Nature Conservancy have spread more than 70 million eelgrass seeds over the salt marshes off the southern end of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The eelgrass beds have grown to cover 3,612 hectares, and long-term monitoring of the restored areas reveals a thriving and resilient ecosystem, with the seagrasses acting as a carbon and nitrogen sink. The researchers say that the success of this project provides a glimmer of hope for ecosystems and the climate.

“Snow Leopard” by Sideshow_Matt is licensed under CC BY 2.0
  1. Legislation restores leopard populations: Despite their resilience and superb hunting abilities, most leopard species are endangered due to habitat degradation and poaching. However, according to collaborative research from the University of Copenhagen and colleagues from China, leopard populations in northern China are on the mend. This population rebound is linked to the Chinese government’s 13th five-year plan, which was implemented in 2015 to restore biodiversity in the area.

Even though the news is filled with debates and disasters (or disastrous debates), there is always hope hidden in the margins. If you’d like to share some Good News with us, submit an article by contacting one of the Blog Editors.

Good News Friday (10/23/20)

Author: Camellia Moors ’22

It is admittedly easy to get caught up in the seemingly endless torrent of negative environmental news from around the globe, which can make positive actions feel pointless. In doing this, we can lose track of positive developments and, even worse, lose hope for our planet’s future. If you are in this position, welcome to our new “Good News Friday” series, which hopes to provide a breath of fresh air with some recent positive environmental news from around the world. 

Here’s a list of just some of the things that have been happening recently:

Image Credit: Lucien Wanda via Pexels.com
  1. Bye-Bye Ocean Plastic: It is no secret that plastics pollute our oceans, present on both the surface and the seafloor and worsened by the volumes of trash generated during the pandemic. Groups like the Ocean Voyages Institute and The Ocean Cleanup, however, have made it their mission to remove some of this pollution: the former recently removed the largest-ever haul of plastic (103 tons) from the Pacific Ocean, and the latter plans to present its first product made from collected ocean plastics later this month.
Image credit: images.nasa.gov
  1. Planetary Emergency: The United State’s announcement of its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017 sent shockwaves around the world, threatening future progress towards obtaining emissions goals. While that withdrawal cannot officially go into effect until November 4th of this year (one day after the election), one reason for hope for the future of global cooperation is that the leaders of 64 countries plus the European Union have acknowledged the “planetary emergency” and have pledged to undertake a variety of actions to counteract environmental degradation.
Image Credit: Kamil Szerlag via Pexels.com
  1. Climate Cases: Litigation seems to have become a common way of targeting polluters and encouraging environmental justice in recent years. One example is an ongoing suit filed by state and local governments against the American Petroleum Institute (API) which charges that API misled consumers about the climate impacts of fossil fuels. Regardless of the case’s outcome, advocates see the act of litigation alone as providing serious leverage against big oil.

It might not seem like it, but progress, even if slow, is progress nonetheless. Here’s to hoping it gets even better! 

If you’d like to share some Good News with us, submit an article by contacting one of the Blog Editors.

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