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Lenape Tahkokën (Fall) Poem

Mèchi tahkokënëmihëna,
   We are already experiencing Autumn,

Ok yukwe thapànëmihëna,
   And now we are having cool weather,

Alëmi xu pënipahikëleyok,
   The leaves will begin to fall from the trees,

Xuniti nànkahchuwàk Lënapeyok.
   Soon the Delawares will shiver from the cold.

Winter Poem

Yukwe mèchi luwànëmihëna,
   Now we are experiencing winter,

Ok yukwe nkàski athiluhehëna.
   And now we can tell the wintertime stories.

Wàni Lënape xu tupànuxweyok,
   The Delawares will walk in the frost,

Ok xuniti nèki Chëlilisàk ktëkiyok.
   And soon the Snowbirds (Juncos) will return.

By Dr. Nicky Kay Michael, Chair
For the January 2014 Delaware Indian News

We want to extend our appreciation for your vote to pass the new Trust Document, which effectively increases the scholarships to 25% of the interest gained from our former Trust Monies. More importantly, our students thank you!

These last few months have been very active. A few of those highlights include:

On October 22, we held a Scholarship Workshop attended by Operation Eagle and several other local Indian and education programs. Cara Cowan Watts, Councilmember from the Cherokee Nation, presented strategies for applying and obtaining award winning scholarships. We are very grateful for her time and energy.

Scholarship applications soon can be submitted via the Internet! For all you tech savvy college students, we felt that updating our application to meet today’s cyber society, we should at the very least, provide an on-line application process. We will still, however, accept hard copies of your scholarship application. Check our web site (www.delawaretribe.org) for updates about when this goes live.

At our monthly Education Committee meeting on December 16, we had to make some tough decisions. Although we increased the percentage from the interest of the Trust Monies, given the amount of applications we received this year, we are unable to sustain providing $400 per semester scholarships through the entire year of 2014. The Education Committee had to decrease the amount to $300 per semester. We apologize to our students who depend and need our scholarships. In January, we will be holding a workshop to address how to increase the Education monies through other possibilities, such as developing a fundraising system.

If you have an outstanding Delaware college student you would like to recognize, please email me at nickykaymichael@gmail.com. Let me know their course of study, GPA, and why you think they should be recognized. We appreciate all your support and hope all our students and families have a wonderful holiday season.

Bonnie Jo Griffith, Co-Chair, Wellness Committee

At the October 7 Delaware Tribal Council meeting, a Wellness Committee was formed. Jenifer Pechonick and I will co-chair this new offering from our tribe. We will be looking at programs to inform, educate and motivate our tribal members and their families to live a healthier life.

Presently we are looking at having nutritionists come in periodically and help us with more diabetic-friendly, heart-healthy, and weight-conscious diets.

We also hope to start a walking group that will get participants acclimated gradually to being able to walk at least one mile a day. Hopefully some will take this program even farther, and walk several miles a day!

Another program in the works is a “Choose to Lose” weight loss competition. The program will be a voluntary effort and participants will pay a nominal enrollment fee. At the end of the program the person with the largest percentage of weight loss will be declared the winner and will receive 75% of the money paid for participation. The 25% remaining money will be invested in a new wellness program.

The details for these programs should be finalized by mid-February. All information will be on the tribal we site as soon as it is complete. All Delawares are encouraged to join in, as well as their families.

Should anyone have suggestions are questions, please contact Jenifer at 918-214-6872 or me at 918-331-3805.

Written by Mike Caron, published in Lawrence Journal-World, August 14, 2013

Many years ago the eminent anthropologist Frank Speck wrote that the last Lenape (Delaware) “Big House,” their traditional spiritual center, was located somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the Pine Farm in North Lawrence. The adjacent land, where the Lawrence Airport now sits, was cleared for the tribe’s primary maize field by Chief Sarcoxie’s and Chief Fall Leaf’s bands of Delaware soon after their arrival in 1830.

That “Delaware Commons” was continuously farmed until these endlessly harassed native people were forced to relocate shortly after the Civil War. In that bloody conflict virtually every able-bodied Delaware man enlisted with the Union Army.

As the Journal-World reported on Aug. 11, and an editorial reiterated on Aug. 12, the Delaware were forced by the federal authorities to “move to an Oklahoma reservation.” These veterans returned home only to learn that their tribe was being removed to land our government confiscated from the Cherokees as punishment for joining the Confederate side.

Adding insult to injury, the authorities then declared that the Delaware were to be hereafter considered “Cherokees.” The clear intent was to end the tribe’s existence by folding them into the much larger and deeply resentful Cherokee Nation, their mortal enemies in the recent war.

Chief Fall Leaf’s band resisted removal the longest. In a letter every Kansas school child should read, the old chief pleaded with authorities to stop starving his people by withholding treaty-guaranteed provisions in order to force these helpless holdouts to abandon their homes and relocate to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

Gov. Charles Robinson was centrally involved in plotting with the Delaware agent, John Pratt, to get the tribe removed from Kansas. The rich “Delaware Commons” Indian cornfield soon became the heart of Robinson’s “best farm in the territory.”

The governor and cofounder of Lawrence received the famed property as a bribe. The rights to that highly coveted farmland were obtained fraudulently. Leavenworth railroad developers bypassed tribal leaders in favor of a Delaware woman who had no authority to sell the land. Then the land went to Robinson for selling out his hometown’s deep commercial interests in obtaining a south of the Kansas River route for the transcontinental railroad.

Your readers deserve to know that the Delaware did not arbitrarily select that property merely because it has close proximity to the Kansas Turnpike. They have purchased a land that is an important part of their history in Kansas. There is a lot of speculation that the Delaware “Return to Kansas” movement is about a casino. The tribe’s return is driven by many decades of discrimination and restrictions limiting their ability to prosper independently. Tribal sovereignty is paramount.

Mention of Delaware land purchase inquiries in Leavenworth and Wyandotte Counties, as well as Ohio, reinforce the narrative that this long-abused tribe is merely shopping around for casino land. Both counties were integral parts of the original Delaware treaty land. The Delaware initially chose the site of Fort Leavenworth for their principal village until Lt. Leavenworth, finding Weston, Mo., too swampy for his fort site, disobeyed orders and violated treaty promises by confiscating that location for a military camp intended to guarantee that these Indians would never again be harassed or invaded by squatters or dishonest traders.

The Wyandotte tribe, which had been their neighbors in Ohio, arrived after all the best land had been taken. The Delaware sold these desperate Ohio refugees some of their land, which was promptly coveted by non-Indians who developed Kansas City, Kan.

It took close to a century for the Delaware to regain federal recognition. This resilient tribe’s members, who all Algonquian peoples call the “Grandfathers,” are finally coming home to Kansas, the land they were promised they could live on undisturbed forever if they would only put their mark on our government’s paper.

— Mike Caron earned his master’s degree from Kansas University and did additional graduate work in historical geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University and KU. He has researched Nation Americans in this area for more than 40 years.