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Indigenous NYC

Indigenous NYC or Native American NYC was originally Lenape.

Indigenous Americans may not be Latin, but Latin culture in the Americas is very Indigenous. Today many New Yorkers are proud of our Taíno, Carib and Garifuna, Aztec, Maya, Inca and other Indigenous heritage.

At the time of European contact, the Americas were full of people who were cultivating and managing the land. Great civilizations among the First Nations included Mississippi Mound Builders and the Southwest Pueblos. These were large, highly-developed societies, but there were people everywhere. Most were farmers. Some were hunter gatherers.

There was nothing primitive about the First Nations. They just weren’t European.

The pre-contact population is highly debated but most estimates range from 50 to 100 million. European pandemics, genocidal practices, and the introduction of invasive livestock, caused a rapid 90% depopulation. Imagine the shock of that, yet many survived.

One of the big lies is that we were wiped out. If there are no people, you can take the land. The truth is that we intermarried or escaped into the mountains and forests. We are still here. We’ve always been here.

Colonizers tried to force us to be culturally European, but you can still see our Indigenous heritage in Latin music and dance, art, beauty queens, people’s names, place names, moon names, matriarchal family and leadership structures, and even in the ways that American Latins socialize.

For example, in Puerto Rico, a bohio (Taíno thatch building) becomes a chinchorro (roadside restaurant bar) which in New York City becomes a street fair kiosk or bodega corner store. The Taíno nation didn’t survive, but the people and social structures still live today.

Indigenous Archive

Indigenous Festivals NYC

The Redhawk Native American Arts Council’s Indigenous People Day Pow Wow is the biggest Native American festival we know of in New York City.

The National Puerto Rican Day Parade is New York City’s biggest Indigenous Caribbean festival.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico is a Latin American icon of Indigenous heritage. New York’s biggest Indigenous Mexican festival is Las Mañanitas a Nuestra Virgen de Guadalupe, the Mexican birthday festival at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Indigenous New York City

The name “Manhattan” comes from the Lenape “Mannahatta” which means “land of many hills.” The hills have mostly been flattened by development, but Indigenous NYC is still there underneath it all.

The old trading post is under the National Museum of the American Indian at the southern tip of Manhattan. Broadway was the trail north to the main village in what is now Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan, and upstate along the Hudson River under what is now Route 9. The Bowery was the trail that led up to the mainland shore of Long Island Sound. Red Hook Lane in Downtown Brooklyn was a Canarsie trail.

In traditional cultures, great trees are meeting spots. The Lenape sacred Council Elm was underneath the fountain at Bowling Green park.

The U.S. government forced the Lenape Delaware off their lands to Oklahoma. Yet the spirit of the First Nations has always been here and the Great Spirit of the land, the land of many hills, Mannahatta, will always be here.

There are many Indigenous sites in New York City. People forget, but the land remembers. Wëli kishku (Good Day in Lenape Delaware).

Indigenous New Yorkers

The Indigenous World

Indigenous people represent a continuum of cultures from Alaska and the Canadian arctic to Tierra del Fuego at the bottom of South America.

Indigenous peoples have a balanced symbiotic relationship with the land. Killing the people, kills the land; and killing the land, kills the people. Preserving Indigenous ways is really self-preservation.

Indigenous Culture

Our culture is part of your culture.

Maria Tallchief, the First US American Prima Ballerina, Popularized The Nutcracker

Maria Tallchief was the first US American prima ballerina (Everett Collection/Adobe)
Maria Tallchief was the first US American prima ballerina (Everett Collection/Adobe)

Ki He Kah Stah Tsa (Elizabeth Marie “Betty” Tallchief) was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma on January 24, 1925.

Look at her hands. That’s Balanchine technique. She danced for him at Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and then became New York City Ballet’s and America’s first prima ballerina. Dancing “The Firebird” in 1949 made her a star. Together with George Balanchine, the father of ballet in the United States, she popularized “The Nutcracker.” Tallchief danced the Sugarplum Fairy.

Today ballet has become a career for niños bien (rich kids) because it takes so much expensive training and support from an early age to achieve mastery. But it makes sense that natural talent would rise from an Indigenous community.

For us, dance is a spiritual expression. We dance to show that we belong to our community. We dance to show our individuality within our community. We dance for faith and we dance for love. It’s all the same thing, isn’t it?

In the beginning we are all Indigenous somewhere.
In the end, we are all children of the earth, sun, moon and stars.
It’s time to remember who we are.

Wanìshi
(Thank you in Lenape Delaware)

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