Pennsylvania Partners with Lehigh to Gather and Promote Native American Histories and Cultures

It is time to begin to correct the mistakes and include Native people in the storytelling process, he said. The grant will allow the Pennsylvania Tourism Office and Lehigh to do that through the gathering, marketing and promoting of the stories, histories and cultures of the tribal nations originally from Pennsylvania.

The grant, announced Friday, Oct. 13, during a morning ceremony on the Clayton University Center lawn, will enable Lehigh researchers to engage tribal communities that have been relocated from the state to help create a record of their Indigenous histories in Pennsylvania, Daley explained.

The team overseeing the grant research includes Jason Hale, a senior research scientist in the College of Health and IIS who is affiliated with the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation of Kansas; Carly Camplain, a member of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma and an assistant professor in the Department of Community and Population Health; history professor Michelle LeMaster, and Christine Makosky Daley, a professor and chair of the Department of Community Health and Population.

Carrie Fischer Lepore, deputy secretary of tourism at the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, said her office knew it would be a challenge to find descendants of Pennsylvania’s Indigenous nations. Some of them, such as the Susquehannock, are now considered extinct.

“We knew we needed to find partners to help us with this project, and we are eager to learn, so we sought out an academic partner to give us guidance…When we came across Sean Daley and the Institute for Indigenous Studies, we knew we had found the right team,” Lepore said.

“Not only do they have the expertise we lacked, they have the connections to the tribal nations who were once located in Pennsylvania, some of whom I’m honored to have with us here today,” she said during the ceremony, which included Deborah Dotson, the president of the Delaware Nation.

The Pennsylvania Tourism Office strives to create an authentic experience for visitors both near and far, but Pennsylvania hasn’t done a good job of telling the story of the people who were living here prior to the arrival of Western Europeans, Lepore said.

In fact, the early leaders of the Commonwealth did everything they could to erase Indigenous stories and culture, she said.

“The Pennsylvania Tourism Office wants to preserve and uplift the stories and cultures of the Indigenous communities,” Lepore said. “Tourism is a vehicle to make sure that voices of all backgrounds and cultures are heard…”

Hale, who invited his family members to perform with him, began the ceremony by using hand drums and singing a Native song of celebration to honor the partnership between the IIS and Commonwealth . “It’s a song to set forward good health and wellness, now and into the future,” he said.

In addition to the grant announcement, Friday’s events included the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Lehigh and the Delaware Nation, and an open house at the IIS, featuring Indigenous food and dance.