Some tribal leaders are opposed to a federal plan to move a statue of a Lenape chief two blocks in Philadelphia, with one official saying his people are “tired of moving.”
The statue of Chief Tamanend, who signed a peace treaty with William Penn in 1682, currently adorns an Interstate 95 entrance ramp that leads into the Old City neighborhood.
The National Park Service now wants to move the bronze likeness to a more prominent location: the newly planned Tamanend Square, which is part of a revamping of historic Market Street and only two blocks away from the statue’s current less-than-ideal home, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Despite the seemingly good intentions of the feds, the plan is being held up by Native American leaders.
“After 300-plus years of forced removal, it just seems as if it’s just another metaphoric forced removal from an area of our own land,” Jeremy Johnson, cultural education director of the federally recognized Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, Okla, told the outlet.
Tribal leaders say Tamanend was exploited by colonizers into signing land sales because natives did not believe or understand that land could be a sellable asset as it was in Europe.
Eventually, the Lenape were stripped of their land in the region and forced to move to Oklahoma.
where it is inaccessible to pedestrians. associationforpublicart.org
“We’re tired of moving,” Johnson told the paper. “We’ve been told multiple times in our history that we’re in the way of progress.”
The 1995 statue depicts Tamanend standing on a turtle with an eagle near his shoulder, symbolizing his clan’s connection to Earth and a messenger of the Great Spirit.
Officials want to transform Market Street by 2026, in time for the 250th birthday celebration of the US.
Under the plan, Tamanend Square would be anchored by the statue at Second and Market streets and connected to existing parkland and a redesigned corridor.
Stakeholders in the initiative claim that moving the statue will allow it to be “more easily be appreciated.”
“We aspire to have the statue moved from its current location,” said Bill Marrazzo, chair of the Independence Historical Trust which is raising money for the project, and the leader of Philly’s public radio station.
Marrazzo reportedly hoped the statue would “become sort of a monumental piece for educating people about Chief Tamanend’s role in the creation of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
The tribal groups considered to be stakeholders — including the Delaware Tribe of Indians, Delaware Nation and Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, had not yet reached a consensus, he told the paper.
News of the rift came as New York’s Museum of Natural History removed its famed Native American displays in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which ordered stolen Indigenous artifacts and remains to be returned to their ancestors.