When Brianna Dagostino, a member of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation in South Jersey, started at Montclair State in 2019, she said she thought more could be done to recognize Native American culture in New Jersey.
Most students, she observed, believe that when Andrew Jackson had his Trail of Tears, all East Coast Native Americans were pushed West or killed.
But there were people that stayed behind and that are still here, said the Cumberland County high school teacher. "If you are from New Jersey, or go to school in New Jersey, you should know this aspect of local history" she said.
Indeed, while the state mandates students in elementary school learn about Native American history in New Jersey, many educators believe there is still work to be done to counter misperceptions.
Now, under a $1 million grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Native American and Indigenous Studies program at Montclair State University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences is creating a New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice that will prioritize connecting with local Native American communities and supporting their sovereignty.
The center will focus on matters of environmental justice, language revitalization and increasing political recognition, according to the university. It will also create a digital archive on tribal history and resources to aid the Native American community and the university faculty and students.
"[It] will be the first and only university-based project in New Jersey that aims to transform public understanding of Native people and to do so in partnership with Indigenous communities across the state," Anthropology Department Chair Chris Matthews and a co-director of Native American and Indigenous Studies said in a statement.
New Jersey's landscape is historically tied to the Lenape people. It was part of a vast territory known as Lenapehoking -- or "the homelands of the Lenape," which stretched from western Connecticut to eastern Pennsylvania and from the Hudson Valley to parts of Delaware.
Three tribes were recognized by the State of New Jersey between 1980 and 1982: the Powhatan Lenape Nation, the Ramapough Lenape Nation, and Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape. These tribes continue to actively work to reclaim and protect their ancestral land and legacy.
Many organizations and schools have adopted land acknowledgements, which is typically a formal statement acknowledging the Indigenous Peoples of a particular area. Montclair State University's Land Acknowledgement, released in 2022, recognizes the university is in the Lenapehoking territory and commits itself to working alongside the Native American community. It appears on all Montclair State University syllabi and is read at some formal meetings.
"We worked directly with Tribal leaders in the state to draft a statement that was meaningful, but also pulled the story forward where Montclair takes responsibility for doing the work of decolonization," said Mark Clatterbuck, a co-director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program at Montclair State University. "Doing that work is different than just saying work needs to be done."
Among those in the Native American studies program is Kate Kilroy, a junior, who said that hands-on learning experiences have produced "a deeper and more dynamic understanding of indigenous culture, history, and current issues than I would get in a classroom alone."
They have included workshops at the university's childcare center teaching the Munsee language -- a dialect of the Lenape. Students have also been involved in creating a digital repository to document the environmental damage caused by a Superfund site in Upper Ringwood, which has been impacted the ancestral homeland of Ramapough Turtle Clan.
The program also offers a four-week Summer Field School. This past year, students working with the Ramapough Clan at the Ramapough Mountain Cemetery, spent time mapping and documenting burial sites.
"The best way to get involved in Indigenous issues is through education," said Kilroy, "Indigenous people are already telling you how you can help them and what you can do. You just need to listen."