Friends are answering the call from sovereign Indigenous communities, researching and acknowledging Friends’ roles in Indian Boarding Schools, toward acts of righting relations with Native Nations’ Peoples – those on whose land we benefit. A network of Friends, east coast to Alaska, have found unity in forming the Quaker Indian Boarding School (QIBS) Research Group and have written a 2025 QIBS Epistle. Initiator and facilitator of both Salem Quarter IAC and PYM First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative participates in the QIBS research and is an epistle signatory. Thoughtful responses may be submitted to FCRC via emailing SacredWovenWord@yahoo.com. [Read more…] about Epistle from the Quaker Indian Boarding School (QIBS) Research Group
First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative
Sovereign Reconciliation 2025 (FCRC)
Your First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative of PYM has set a series of meeting dates for 2025. We are led toward acknowledging mutually beneficial relationships with leaders of sovereign, recognized Native Nations and acting with love.
We will be pondering worship sharing queries, reviewing our living document – Guidelines for those Seeking Healing Relations with Indigenous Peoples – and checking-in with current actions taken up by individuals, meetings, and quarters.
Please let us know if you would like to join below–you will receive the Zoom link for our meeting by email.
First Contact Reconciliation Meeting
Sovereign Reconciliation 2025 (FCRC)
Your First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative of PYM has set a series of meeting dates for 2025. We are led toward acknowledging mutually beneficial relationships with leaders of sovereign, recognized Native Nations and acting with love.
We will be pondering worship sharing queries, reviewing our living document – Guidelines for those Seeking Healing Relations with Indigenous Peoples – and checking-in with current actions taken up by individuals, meetings, and quarters.
Please let us know if you would like to join below–you will receive the Zoom link for our meeting by email.
First Contact Reconciliation Meeting
Sovereign Reconciliation 2025 (FCRC)
Your First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative of PYM has set a series of meeting dates for 2025. We are led toward acknowledging mutually beneficial relationships with leaders of sovereign, recognized Native Nations and acting with love.
We will be pondering worship sharing queries, reviewing our living document – Guidelines for those Seeking Healing Relations with Indigenous Peoples – and checking-in with current actions taken up by individuals, meetings, and quarters.
Please let us know if you would like to join below–you will receive the Zoom link for our meeting by email.
First Contact Reconciliation Meeting
Sovereign Reconciliation 2025 (FCRC)
Your First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative of PYM has set a series of meeting dates for 2025. We are led toward acknowledging mutually beneficial relationships with leaders of sovereign, recognized Native Nations and acting with love.
We will be pondering worship sharing queries, reviewing our living document – Guidelines for those Seeking Healing Relations with Indigenous Peoples – and checking-in with current actions taken up by individuals, meetings, and quarters.
Please let us know if you would like to join below–you will receive the Zoom link for our meeting by email.
First Contact Reconciliation Meeting
Update From the Listening and Lobbying Sprint of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Authorship of this update is attributed to the Jeanne Elberfield and the Listening and Lobbying Sprint of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
Friends, I am writing this update with much optimism in my heart and mind. The Listening and Lobbying Sprint is working diligently towards a draft policy and guidance addressing political lobbying for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Over the past few months, we have learned from a nonprofit expert and PYM’s lawyer about the IRS definitions and limitations on lobbying for a 501(c)(3). We have had regular conversations about how this information helps us to find a solution that mutually satisfies Friends who are led to political advocacy, the PYM Quaker community with diverse leadings and ministries, and the PYM as a 501(c)(3). We continue to ask Spirit to guide our hearts and minds as we navigate our way forward. [Read more…] about Update From the Listening and Lobbying Sprint of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Salem Quarter IAC Minute of Unity Refuting the 1626 Schagen Letter
We stand in support of Lenape leaders refuting Pieter Schaghen’s 1626 letter to the Dutch West India Company, which mentions a supposed purchase of the Island of Manhattan, approximately 22,000 acres, in a trade for goods contemporarily valued around $24. We find this alleged purchase to be myth-based and causative of historical and ongoing harm. Thus, we stand in unity with Chief Urie Ridgeway (Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, Bridgeton NJ), Chief Dwaine Perry (Ramapough Lenape, Mahway NJ), and Brent Stonefish (Munsee-Delaware, Ontario CA).
Our discernment, grounded in experiences and respect for the Lenape People, acknowledges that they have their own systems of rules, laws, and ways of living beyond spirituality; their lifeways govern Lenape society with a deep cultural stewardship of Mother Earth, making the concept of owning land inconceivable. Furthermore, the Lenape are a matriarchal society where matters of importance are overseen by women. However, Schaghen’s letter lacks any evidence of a matriarchal voice, an oral treaty, a wampum belt, a written treaty, or signatories, all of which were customary cultural practices of the time.
Today, the Dutch West India Company is recognized as a trade company which included the slave trade. These enslavers established a feudal system in Lenapehoking, granting land to colonists who brought 50 individuals to this land, thereby marginalizing Lenape voices, creating myths about the original people of this land, and commodifying the land, Mother Earth.
Early contact with Western European diseases is estimated to have reduced the Lenape population by 90-95 percent. Despite surviving massacres, forced removals from Lenapehoking, restrictions on cultural lifeways, forced assimilation, and the removal of children to Indian Boarding Schools and child welfare systems, the Lenape Nations endure and are still here.
Therefore, Salem Quarter (NJ) finds The Schaghen Letter to be a tenacious untruth that has contributed to subsequent historical and ongoing contemporary myth-based harms endured by the original people of Lenapehoking and widespread practices that continue to impact Indigenous People of Turtle Island, as well as other colonized lands. We hear the Lenape leadership, both those who have been removed and those who have remained, seeking inclusion and equity.
To this measure, we, Salem Quarter (NJ) Religious Society of Friends, seek the following, with accountability:
• Recognition of the diverse gifts of Spirit within all creation.
• Relationship building with the original inhabitants of this land, Lenapehoking.
• Harmony, living and honoring all life by stewarding Lenapehoking.
• Mutually beneficial decision-making with Lenape Nations.
• Restoration with and for Lenape Nations/People on whose homeland we benefit.
Presented by the Indian Affairs Committee to Salem Quarter, 9th day Sixth Mo. 2024, Lower Alloways Creek Meetinghouse; accepted and approved by Salem Quarterly Meeting 9th day Sixth Mo. 2024
IAC’s Backstory:
After reading The Schaghen Letter, we queried: From whose point of view was this letter written; to understand this event more completely, what information is needed; how does this account shape what we understand about the land exchange that took place on Manhattan in 1626? We further read Lenapehoking: The Tenacious Myth of the Purchase of Manhattan and we reflected on personal conversations with Chief Urie “Fox Sparrow” Ridgeway (Nanticoke-Lenape) about their Lenape constituency trip to Amsterdam, Autumn 2023.
We stand in support of Lenape leaders refuting Pieter Schagen’s 1626 letter to the Dutch West India Company, which mentions a supposed purchase of the Island of Manhattan, approximately 22,000 acres, in a trade for goods contemporarily valued around $24. We find this alleged purchase to be myth-based and causative of historical and ongoing harm. Thus, we stand in unity with Chief Urie Ridgeway (Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, Bridgeton NJ), Chief Dwaine Perry (Ramapough Lenape, Mahway NJ), and Brent Stonefish (Munsee-Delaware, Ontario CA).
First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative: Healing and Story-telling on Federal Indian Boarding Schools
First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative is seeking Friends’ truths. We are looking for those truths that work toward healing and involve humbly examining and sharing our stories.
[Read more…] about First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative: Healing and Story-telling on Federal Indian Boarding Schools
I’m Not Your Mascot
There are schools using racial mascots of Native Nations Peoples within our PhYM community(ies). From the National Congress of American Indians we hear, “Rather than honoring Native peoples, these caricatures and stereotypes are harmful, perpetuate negative stereotypes of America’s first peoples, and contribute to a disregard for the personhood of Native peoples…. [Read more…] about I’m Not Your Mascot
Promised Land
On Friday, November 2, 2018, members of the First Contact Reconciliation Collaborative (FCRC) attended the screening/ panel discussion of Promised Land, hosted by the National Museum of the American Indians, D.C., and sponsored by the National Congress of American Indians and Alliance of Colonial Era Tribes.
Promised Land “is a social justice documentary that follows two tribes in the Pacific Northwest as they fight for the restoration of treaty rights that have been denied,” as told by members of the Duwamish and Chinook Tribal Nations. Viewers heard stories and saw cultural features of these Peoples, lending to the depth of their indigenous identity, and witnessed the push-back against these indigenous communities, undermining self-determination.
Following the screening, a panel of these tribal members, filmmakers, and sponsors discussed the relevance of the film and entertained questions. We were reminded that the first step in being an “ally” of indigenous peoples is to listen; listen to their leadership.
Pastor JR Norwood (Nanticoke-Lenape, seated with NCAI and ACET) introduced us to the filmmaker team, Vasant and Sarah Salcedo – directors, writers, cinematographers, editor, and producer. We noted, that aside from geographic distance, the story is one that mirrors many tribal nations throughout the country, including those of “early contact” with W. Europeans/ colonization along the east coast, such as Pastor Norwood’s Tribal Nation in southern jersey.
The PhYM FCRC web page “Structural Resources” – https://www.pym.org/first-contact-reconciliation-collaborative/structural-resources/ – contains links to several local tribal nations, where Friends may learn of needs and, with respect, listen to indigenous leadership; listen to tribal nations’ “righteous fight(s).” The FCRC web presence hosts our contact information; we are available to walk-the-walk with Friends at various entry points.
