Listening while Seeking: Tendering One’s Heart and Feeding One’s Soul
The First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative seeks to build beloved community through accompaniment with our local Native Nation neighbors, to love thy neighbor. We listen to authentic voices of local sovereign Native Nations leadership and find perspective through examination of Indigenous issues throughout Indian Country and world views.
The ““Art of Accompaniment” is essentially walking in relationship, by intentionally creating space for inclusion of the authentic voice, enabling Truths to transform peoples lives.
“Citizens of an imperialist country who wish to understand imperialism must first emancipate themselves from the seemingly endless web of threads that bind them emotionally and intellectually to the imperialist condition.”
~Harry Magdoff, Imperialism From the Colonial Age to the Present
Articles:
American Indian Untouchables and the 2012 White House Tribal Leaders Summit, Rev. John Norwood (Nanticoke-Lenape), Native Times, December 11, 2012
Land Grab Universities, Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, High Country News, March 30, 2020
Nature Needs a New Pronoun: To Stop the Age of Extinction, Let’s Start By Ditching “It”, Robin Wall Kimmerer, YES Magazine, Spring 2015
NJ Superior Court Rules Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape are Sovereign Tribe, Lisa J. Ellwood, Indian Country Today, August 31, 2017
Peace Is Possible: Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation In Maine Denise Altvater, Maria Girouard, Arla Patch, and Elizabeth Koopman, Friends Journal, February 1, 2016
Tribal Sovereignty by Jerilyn DeCoteau (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa)
1782: Village of Moravian Delaware Indians Massacred, , Indian Country Today, March 8, 2017
Books:
American Apartheid : The Native American Struggle for Self-Determination and Inclusion, by Stephanie Woodard (2018)
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014)
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) (2013)
DECOLONIZING WEALTH: indigenous wisdom to heal divides and restore balance, by edgar villanueva (Lumbee) (2018)
In the Courts of the Conqueror: The Ten Worst Indian Law Cases, by Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee) (2010)
IN THE LIGHT OF JUSTICE: The Rise of Human Rights in Native America & the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People, by Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee) (2013)
Raising Our Hands, How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find Our Place on the New Frontlines, by Jenna Arnold (2020)
Strong Medicine Speaks: A Native American Elder Has Her Say, by Amy Hill Hearth on the Life of Marion “Strong Medicine” Gould, a tribal elder and mother of Chief Mark Gould (Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape) (2008)
We Are Still Here by John R. Norwood (Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape) (2007)
PDFs:
CALL to CONSCIENCE (QUNO)
Indigenous Peoples Access to Justice, Including Truth and Reconciliation Processes, Institute for the Study of Human Rights
Native Knowledge 360°: A National Education Initative, National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)
Resources for Self-Care and Trauma – from The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
Tribal Nations and the United States, National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Resolution of the General Assembly
We Have A Story to Tell: Native Peoples of the Chesapeake Region, A guide for Teachers grades 9 – 12, Education Office of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)
Videos/ DVDs:
Dawnland, documentary of Indigenous child removal in the US through the nation’s first-ever government-endorsed Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Maine) – What is the relationship between taking the land and taking the children?
Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code, documentary of 15 century Papal Bulls that result in global momentum of domination & dehumanization.
Promised Land, award-winning social justice documentary that follows two tribes in the Pacific Northwest: the Duwamish and the Chinook, as they fight for the restoration of treaty rights they’ve long been denied.
Two Rivers, documentary of a Native American and American-European reconciliation in North Central Washington State.
Corporate Structures Building Beloved Community
Our inner light, guiding work and witness, shares points of light with corporate, structural resources. This list is a collection of authentic Native voices and representation of Friends journeying into that which has been missing within predominant society, reflecting Native inclusion, Native Peoples diversity and human rights. We welcome this revelation and seek to come right with spirit, ourselves, and one another.
Alliance of Colonial Era Tribes (ACET)
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
Association on American Indian Affairs
Canadian Friends Service Committee
Friends General Conference (FGC)
Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)
Indigenous Food Systems Network
Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation
National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)
National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
Native American Rights Fund (NARF)
Organization of American States
Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO)
Ramapough Lunaape Nation
Salem Quarter Indian Affairs Committee
“Peace can only be attained when human beings live in proper relationship to the natural world” ~Tadodaho of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Sid Hill
Query: If you consider all of creation as relatives – animals, plants, minerals, water – rather than resources, what might you be willing to shift in your way of living that would honor these relationships?
Contingents of “Kin” –
Water…Land…Air…Beings
Indigenous Environmental Network
Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW)
QEW Statement on Climate Change
“It would go a long way to caution and direct people in the use of the world, that they were better studied and knowing in the Creation of it. For how could [they] find the confidence to abuse it, while they should see the great Creator stare them in the face, in all and every part of it?” ~William Penn, 1693
Commissions on Indian Affairs:
MD Commission on Indian Affairs
NJ Commission on American Indian Affairs
2006 Governor Corzine visits Ramapough Nation Tribal Center, to sign an executive order creating a six member commission on Native American Community Affairs, to study civil rights, education, housing, and the healthcare needs of the Ramapough, and other American Indians in the state. A Ramapough is appointed to committee, and a Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, as ex-officio.
Dignity Rights Paper from the Delaware Law School
“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites one family. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. The earth is sacred and man and animals are but one part of it. Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.” ~Chief Si’ahl (Duwamish, Suquamish)