My Suburban Escapes

An image was emblazoned in my mind’s eye when I was a child, that of a Native American man with a single tear running down his cheek as he canoes through a trash-strewn land. The resonant voice in the background read,

“Some people have a deep abiding respect
for the natural beauty that was once this country.
And some people don’t. People start pollution.
People can stop it.”

This was powerful stuff for my seven-year-old brain. A little research recently unearthed that it was a one-minute public service announcement for Keep America Beautiful which debuted on Earth Day in1971. It has caused so much ruckus ever since that KAB recently donated the rights to the National Congress of American Indians which retired the ad. Apparently corporate gaslighting, stereotyping and cultural appropriation were rampant in the ad, but I certainly didn’t see it.  I for one never littered since.

Now fifty years later, there is a movement afoot called rematriation, a land-back movement with the goal of restoring a living culture to its rightful place on Mother Earth, “to restore a people to a spiritual way of life, in sacred relationship with their ancestral lands without external interference.” I found this definition at www.native-land.ca.com where you can also discover which native people originally inhabited your neighborhood. I live on Iroquois in Indian Village (a clear-cut case of cultural appropriation) which was home to the Wappinger.  The Schaghticoke and Munsee Lenape were our neighbors.

Just down the road, where I-287 now abruptly forks at the Ramapo Mountains on the border of New York and New Jersey, lived another Lenape tribe, the Ramapo Munsee Lunaape, or The Keepers of the Pass. They inhabited the flat plateau flanking the Ramapo Pass through the mountains and along the Ramapo River in the shadow of an 800-foot mountain which they would ascend to hunt and pray.  At its peak lies a 1.3-billion-year-old boulder, the largest glacial erratic on a mountain top in the state of NY. It is bisected by a deep crevasse through which the sun aligns perfectly on the Fall and Spring solstices. The Ramapough named this “Tahetaweew” (The Gate That Opens the Entrance to the Sacred Rock).  Nation Chief Dwaine Perry explains, “This site, much like that of Mount Sinai, is where our holy people went to deliberate peace and understanding among other peoples. A decision of great importance would be found by tribal elders and brought back down to the fields below where two long houses stood to welcome the decisions inspired by the energy and the sacred knowledge they had gotten at the Tahetaweew.”

One such decision occurred in the brutal winter of 1779/1780 when a young Continental Army general named George Washington was retreating north towards Albany with his troops. He hoped to move through the Pass rather than around the mountains and to keep an eye on the British from the top of Split Rock.  He sought permission from The Keepers and after prayer at Tahetaweew, permission was granted. His troops saved precious time by using their foot trail through the pass, fortifying it as they went to cut off the British supply route.  The importance of this agreement cannot be overstated, the time saved and the intelligence gleaned from the sacred mountain top being important cogs in the wheel of our nation’s formation.

One can still see Manhattan from the same spot Washington spied the masts of enemy ships. Until recently the mountain belonged to the Rockland County Sewer District which operated a wastewater-treatment plant at its base. The land had become an illegal dumping spot and this mountain of wisdom became covered in mountains of trash, the tear-stained eye moment actualized. Long-time friend and advocate of the tribe, The Land Conservancy of New Jersey(LCNJ), hatched a plan to return the land to its rightful owner. The steps involved cleaning, restoring, fundraising, purchasing then donating. They started moving mountains. In tandem with the Mahwah Environmental Volunteers Organization (MEVO), they hosted eleven volunteer cleanup days over the course of nine months. Like a baby after nine months in the womb, the land was again freed of gunk and able to breathe. They removed six full dumpsters, nine dismantled junk cars and thousands of old tires, and nature has since crept back in.

In 2019 the District decided to auction off an undeveloped parcel of 54 acres, but the LCNJ had raised the funds to purchase it outright. The $500,000 raised thus far has also been used for surveys, environmental assessment and title insurance, all of which is imperative to land ownership these days.  They helped the tribe establish the Ramapo Munsee Land Alliance, a non-profit land trust which will allow the nation to conduct business, care for the land and establish gathering places where they can educate future generations.

The Nation now consists of roughly 5,000 members, half of whom live in the Split Rock area and half a diaspora. Led by Chief Perry, they continue to raise funds to expand their rematriation campaign and are currently planning a ceremony to reactive the sacred mountain. Tribes as far away as South America have contacted them to do so. The movement nationwide is steadily gaining momentum.

LCNJ President David Epstein shared, “Indigenous-led groups have found that blending cultural practices and traditions with Western science provides the most effective approach to protecting and stewarding the land and water. These efforts, acknowledged collectively as rematriation or the land back movement, advocate for the transfer of decision-making power over land to Indigenous communities.” It takes a village.

At sunrise on the spring equinox this year, the tribe held a ceremony at the top of the beloved mountain followed by a small celebration with those who had made the dream a reality. The sacred land was officially theirs again after almost 300 years. In Mr. Epstein’s words of wisdom, “While we can neither account for nor atone for the sins of the past, The Land Conservancy has felt an obligation to do our part to make things right.” 

One tear-stained eye has been wiped clean.

Donations can be made at www.ramapomunseelandalliance.org or www.tlc-nj.org.