Plymouth Monthly Meeting
Right Relationship with Indigenous Peoples
Queries
Approved June 16, 2024

 

The land occupied by Plymouth Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) is located in Lenapehoking (the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania). It is on the hill east of the Manaiunck (Schuylkill) River, above Conshohocken, one mile west of the former Lenape village of  Lokanahunshi ("Elm tree") along the Wissahickon Creek.
 
The homeland of the Lenape people has been along the rivers and streams of Lenapehoking for over ten thousand years.  Due to colonization, slavery, genocide, and forced removal, many Lenape were forced to reservation lands in Canada, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. Others who remain in Lenapehoking are our neighbors and continue to maintain their identity. Other Indigenous peoples have made their home in Lenapehoking through past centuries and today.
 
As Friends, we are inheritors of our prior generations’ steps and missteps in their relationship with the Lenape and other Indigenous peoples.
 
We commit ourselves to prayerfully consider the following queries:
  
1.      How are we seeking to understand the role that prior generations of Quakers played in displacing Lenape peoples from Lenapehoking and in participating in programs of cultural erasure (such as Boarding Schools)?
 
2.     How are we seeking to renounce those Christian Church ideologies that legitimized colonization, genocide, and cultural erasure of Indigenous peoples in Lenapehoking and elsewhere (such as the Doctrine of Discovery)?
 
3.      In what ways do we seek opportunities to meet Lenape peoples and to learn directly from them about their history, culture, and current concerns?
 
4.      In what practical ways (monetary or other) have we supported Lenape or other Indigenous peoples in their initiatives and challenges?
 
5.      In what ways have we embraced Lenape perspectives and knowledge of the land, water, and air in the stewardship of the land where our Meetinghouse is located?