BY: KONSTANTIN SIEVAPLESOV

Shelley DePaul, a Lenni Lenape Indian, spoke to a class at Bucks last Wednesday about her people’s family life, customs and culture.

DePaul is a Pennsylvania teacher of music and history, and is currently developing a curriculum around the Lenape Indians. She’s also hosted several exhibits and works to preserve the Lenape language.

Her tribe is mainly descendants of the tribes who stayed in Pennsylvania and married German immigrants.

She opened her talk with a word which sounded like “lanish.” “That’s Lenape for hello, or you could just use ‘hey,’ so a lot of us are already speaking kind of Lenape,” she said.

“The Lenape always meet in circles and then do a prayer. That’s why I kind of like this auditorium, it’s circular in a way.” DePaul then recited the prayer her people would do in Lenape and translated it in English.

It was solemn and involved a few simple gestures in all directions. The translation involved humbly asking the maker for guidance.

“There aren’t really textbooks on the Lenni Lenape’s history because our history is oral. That’s the tradition,” DePaul said, “it was even difficult (for me) to get permission from elders to share it like this.”

“Archeologically, we’ve been here for 1,300 years, which is why we’re referred to as ‘the original people,’” she explained.

It was interesting that DePaul referred to herself as Indian, rather than Native American. The distinction didn’t seem to be a big issue. “We usually use Indian so I’m just going to say that,” she explained.

DePaul talked about the basic clan-family, the small community and matriarchy of the tribes. The matriarchy was especially unusual for an older civilization.

“Clan mothers make the decisions and the Elders are made up of both men and women. In fact, if a man marries a woman from an other tribe, he goes to live with her family instead of his.”

When a Lenape hits puberty, he or she is guided and made to go on a “vision quest” to hear nature. Sometimes it takes several tries but it reinforces the Lenape’s belief in the maker’s energy being in all things.

Therefore, the Lenape see themselves as equals to all things on the earth, including the trees and the animals. She explained that before killing an animal or plucking a plant, the plant or animal is directly addressed and a short prayer is recited as a sign of respect.

This extremely high regard for nature creates a few unique habits in Lenape culture, such as never plucking the first plant you see, only the second. “The logic is, if we don’t take the first, we won’t take the last.”

“It’s a little bit of conservation,” DePaul explained. On hunts they even let older animals go as a sign of respect.

Deer are the most common animal the Lenape hunted. “The deer is like our buffalo when you think of the tribes of the west. We use every part. Even the brain is used for tanning.”

DePaul talked about the problem of Indian tribes in a modern society. She’s opposed to gambling and feels that the money the federal government provides can make tribes dependent.

“We petitioned to get state recognition and wrote up a petition that said we didn’t want any land or any money, just recognition. That way we would be able to use things like eagle feathers and practice our religion more freely.”

State rep. Louise Bishop turned them down. “We basically gave up on getting state recognized; Bishop didn’t really understand us or our requests.”

In a sign of what could even be seen as disrespect, DePaul continued, “After we presented to her she even asked me if I’d dress up and do a thing for her kid’s party.”

Near the closing of her presentation, DePaul showed us a few objects that were German, but had hidden Lenape imagery to help show the assimilation and how they tried to keep the culture alive.

She had a doll with a face behind the head to represent a Lenape idea of having a face you show to others and a private face you show no one. DePaul also told us how her people would plant cedar trees, which are sacred to the Lenape, outside their houses.

At the end of the lesson, she gave us plenty of resources to find out more information, such as Lenapenation.org. In a very modern twist, she even has YouTube videos and online lessons available to disseminate information about her tribe.