On October 8, the University will host a Welcoming Ceremony to celebrate the new Center, featuring a traditional prayer, reflections from tribal leaders, and a performance by the Red Blanket Singers, a drum and dance group from the Nanticoke Tribe. The celebration will bring together students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners who helped bring the NJCIJ to life.

“We’re thrilled to welcome the NJCIJ to ����vlog alongside our friends, partners, and longtime advocates. After years of hard work, it is inspiring to see this vision come to life. This is not only a meaningful milestone for Montclair but also for the wider New Jersey community,” says Precious Benally, Director of the New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice.

“The Center brings together Montclair, community partners, and Native Nations to uphold Tribal sovereignty, amplify Indigenous voices, and create opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to learn and work alongside one another and with our Tribal partners with humility, creativity, and reciprocity.”

A Center Years in the Making

The Center grows out of Montclair’s Native American and Indigenous Studies program, which has steadily expanded since its creation to meet the priorities of New Jersey’s state-recognized Native nations — the Ramapough Lunaape, Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, and Powhatan Renape. Those priorities include environmental justice, political recognition, language revitalization and the protection of cultural heritage.

“The NJCIJ will be the first and only university-based project in New Jersey that aims to transform public understanding of Native people and to do so in partnership with Indigenous communities across the state,” says , chair of Anthropology, co-director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) program and co–principal investigator of the grant.

The University’s adoption of a Land Acknowledgement Statement in 2022, recognizing its location on Lenapehoking, marked a visible milestone in this work. Annual events such as Indigenous Peoples Day, NAIS lectures and panels, and the Summer Field School have deepened student engagement and public understanding.

Members of the Red Blanket Singers of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribe perform a traditional dance at Montclair’s 2022 celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day. (Photo by Mike Peters)

Mellon Foundation Support

The NJCIJ has been made possible by a prestigious three-year, $1 Million grant from the Mellon Foundation, awarded to the NAIS program to establish the Center and expand its programming. The funding will deepen interdisciplinary research, support student initiatives, and create a digital repository of tribal knowledge using Mukurtu software to preserve oral histories, environmental justice archives and language materials for use by tribal members, faculty and students.

“The Mellon Foundation grant will significantly increase Montclair’s ability to fulfill our commitment to addressing the historical legacies of Indigenous dispossession and dismantling practices of erasure that persist today,” says NAIS co-director Mark Clatterbuck. “The new Center, in tandem with our NAIS program, is focused on Indigenizing New Jersey while decolonizing educational, social and political legacies that continue to overlook Native people and exploit Native lands.

Leading with Experience

At the helm of the NJCIJ is Precious Benally, an Indigenous (Diné) professional with more than a decade of experience in tribal law, policy and community engagement. She has worked with tribal governments, justice system practitioners, and federal agencies to design innovative solutions addressing governance, economic development, juvenile justice and social services.

Benally brings a leadership style grounded in listening and partnership. As Senior Advisor in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Native Affairs and Economic Development, she advised on tribal consultations and policy matters aimed at creating pathways for sustainable economic growth and self-determination. She also teaches Native American Law at Columbia and Brooklyn Law Schools, cultivating culturally competent classroom communities that engage deeply with Indigenous narratives and policies.

Her proven fundraising success — including securing over $2 million in federal grants — and extensive conference planning experience will strengthen the Center’s programming, community engagement, and resource development.

“I’m truly honored to step into this role as the Center’s first director and to carry forward the strong foundation built by my colleagues and our partners. My lived experience as an indigenous woman and my work supporting Native nation-building efforts have shown me the transformative power of community—and that’s exactly what drives the Center’s work. Our mission is simple but profound: to walk in partnership with Tribal communities to re-Indigenize New Jersey, while giving students meaningful, holistic learning experiences and transforming how the University lives up to its responsibility to society.”

Building Partnerships and Advancing Justice

Working closely with NAIS faculty and tribal leaders, the NJCIJ will serve as a center for communication, fundraising, events and gatherings that highlight the unique questions facing Montclair’s Indigenous students and New Jersey’s tribal communities. The Center embraces cultural traditions, community-led research and environmental stewardship, combating Indigenous erasure by ensuring that Indigenous leaders guide teaching, learning and public understanding.
Among its priorities:

• Community collaboration on language revitalization, sacred site protection and cultural preservation.
• Student engagement through field-based courses, mentorship and direct learning from Indigenous knowledge keepers.
• Digital preservation of oral histories and resources to ensure accessibility for tribal members and scholars alike.

The NJCIJ envisions a future where Indigenous histories and futures are honored and celebrated, where Native students thrive, and where public understanding of New Jersey’s Indigenous communities deepens through education, dialogue and justice-centered action.

Welcoming Ceremony – October 8 at 2:00 p.m.

In addition to the Red Blanket Singers and Dancers, the event will include a Land Acknowledgement reading, a traditional welcoming prayer, remarks from Dean Fatma Mili, NJCIJ Director Precious Benally, and tribal leaders Chief Mann and Chief Ridgeway. A reception will follow for conversation and community building. All are welcome to join in celebrating this significant accomplishment and the partnerships that made it possible.

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On Their Land, In Their Voices
Students Plant Seeds to Revive a Native American Language

When Khara Lillian Brown walks across the stage at ����vlog’s Spring Commencement, she’ll be celebrating more than earning her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology – she’ll be celebrating a victory against extraordinary odds.

While in college, Brown was given just a 3% chance to live. Defying that prognosis with courage and determination, she not only survived but thrived, finding her purpose and passion through research, community and storytelling.

Her resilience carried her through multiple surgeries and intensive rehabilitation. Today, she is presenting original research, receiving prestigious scholarships, and exploring the complex history of free and formerly enslaved African American communities.

Maybe I didn’t do as well as I wanted – I’m a perfectionist and hard on myself – but I’ve met people, changed lives, touched people with my story. And that’s all a person can ask for – to be a catalyst for change.” — Khara Brown

A Newark native, Brown majored in Anthropology with minors in Archaeology and Native American and Indigenous Studies. Throughout her time at Montclair, she combined scholarship with activism, volunteering in the campus Archaeology Lab, co-founding the club LadiesFIRST, and participating in organizations such as the Native American and Indigenous Studies Club and the Coalition for Collective Liberation.

She also helped launch the Women’s Leadership Conference, organized by the University’s Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) Program. At this year’s conference, she was honored with a Triumph Over Trauma Award, recognized before more than 350 high school students, educators, community leaders and artists.

Balancing academics with health challenges wasn’t simple.

In 2015, Khara Brown faced a devastating diagnosis after being hospitalized with catastrophic intestinal failure, leaving her paralyzed and barely able to speak. Doctors told her mother there was a 97% chance of fatality. Brown, determined to survive, whispered: “If God created the world from nothing, imagine what He could do with 3%.”

Reflecting on her journey, she says, “To be able to say that I’m in three honor societies, doing my best, graduating – He obviously did some magic with that 3%.”

But overcoming the odds wasn’t easy.

“Maintaining a steady momentum that allowed for proper mental and physical care was the hardest part,” Brown shares. “Finding that balance between what I want to do and what my body can allow me to do was hard as well. You want to be at the same pace as everyone else, but it’s okay if your path is different.”

Achievements and Future Plans

Brown’s academic work focused on free and formerly enslaved African American communities of the 18th and 19th centuries, research she presented at the Archaeological Society of New Jersey Conference.

With the help of her advisor, Christopher Matthews, Anthropology chairperson, Brown researched and compared three archaeological sites in Northern New Jersey and New York. She also participated in the prestigious working alongside descendants of enslaved people to map the Burial Ground for the Enslaved. This summer, she will continue that work through an internship with Montpelier’s Archaeology Department.

In addition to her archaeological work, Brown deepened her commitment to Indigenous studies through hands-on experiences at the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm, which provides traditional foods for the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lunaape (Lenape) Nation. The tribe can no longer safely farm its ancestral land in Upper Ringwood, New Jersey, due to industrial contamination.

Brown credits her success to a wide network of supporters.

“Big shout out to my EOF family, Dr. Danny Jean and the whole gang, my professors Chris Matthews and Mark Clatterbuck, and the whole Anthropology Department,” she says.

She also expresses deep gratitude to Chief Mann of the Turtle Clan and the Munsee Three Sisters Farm, her co-workers who kept her nourished during long study sessions, and her family and prayer communities.

“Khara is such an amazing person who has not only overcome so much to complete her college degree, but continues to see serving the greater good and, especially, underserved and marginalized communities as her purpose. Her impact as a student, archaeologist, educator and person will be profound,” Matthews says.

Words of Reflection

After graduation, Brown plans to move to Virginia for the summer and celebrate her 30th birthday – grateful for all she has overcome and excited for what lies ahead.

“Now that I’m at the finish line, I can sit back and say it was worth it. In some moments, it didn’t feel possible. But perseverance – that tenacity – is what keeps me going.”

The University will celebrate its graduates at Commencement exercises on Wednesday, May 7 and Thursday, May 8, 2025, at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.

Story by Marilyn Joyce Lehren, University Communications and Marketing

Ready to Start Your Montclair Journey?

Prospective Students and Parents: Learn more about Montclair admissions, our Anthropology major and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Journalists: Contact our Media Relations team to request assets or schedule an interview with a member of the Class of 2025.

With its commitment to Indigenous rights, racial justice, decolonization and eco-justice, the NAIS program emphasizes the priorities of New Jersey’s state-recognized Native American tribes – the Ramapough Lunaape, Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape and Powhatan Renape nations – which include environmental justice, political recognition, cultural heritage and language revitalization.

The NJCIJ will be a center for communication, fundraising, events and gatherings that highlight the unique questions facing Montclair’s Indigenous students and New Jersey’s tribal communities. It will coordinate the University’s work to change public narratives, increase Indigenous student enrollment and pursue justice-oriented action on issues affecting Native people in the state.

“The NJCIJ will give focus to the varied work Montclair faculty and students are doing in partnership with New Jersey’s tribal communities,” says Anthropology Department Chair Chris Matthews, a co-director of NAIS and co-Principal Investigator of the grant. “[It] will be the first and only university-based project in New Jersey that aims to transform public understanding of Native people and to do so in partnership with Indigenous communities across the state.”

About the New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice and NAIS Program Grant

In addition to Matthews, the co-Principal Investigators of the grant include Religion Professor Mark Clatterbuck, Anthropology Professor Maisa Taha and Educational Foundations Professor Lisa Lynn Brooks, all fellow co-directors of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program.

The grant funds will be used to establish the New Jersey Center for Indigenous Justice and achieve the following goals:

• Deepen the impact of the NAIS program by providing additional resources and support for interdisciplinary collaboration and research.
• Establish a digital repository of tribal knowledge and resources to ensure their preservation and availability to tribal members, and to Montclair faculty and students.
• Hire a NJCIJ director who will promote increased engagement with the New Jersey tribes and with Indigenous issues, while also helping to recruit and mentor a growing number of New Jersey tribal members at the University.

Native American and Indigenous Initiatives at ����vlog

����vlog is committed to increasing the awareness and knowledge of New Jersey’s Native American tribes and the issues they face.

As demonstrated by the adoption of a Land Acknowledgement Statement in 2022 that recognizes that the University occupies territory historically known as Lenapehoking, the homeland of all Lenape people, the University is committed to social justice and to offering learning opportunities and promoting Native American culture and history.

In addition to the Native American and Indigenous Studies minor, some of these initiatives include:

• Celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day
• Annual NAIS Summer Field School
• Lectures and Panels

“The Mellon Foundation grant will significantly increase Montclair’s ability to fulfill our commitment to addressing the historical legacies of Indigenous dispossession and dismantling practices of erasure that persist today, as stated in our University Land Acknowledgement,” says Clatterbuck. “The new center, in tandem with our Native American and Indigenous Studies program, is focused on Indigenizing New Jersey while decolonizing educational, social and political legacies that continue to overlook Native people and exploit Native lands.”

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at .

Listen to the episode .

The four week program had a full roster of thirteen students along with one postdoctoral fellow and three TAs who were returning past participants, now helping run the trip.

According to Dr. Clatterbuck, professor and co-director of the program, students have a lot of unlearning to do before they can learn Indigenous history. Students discussed the failures of the school systems in not teaching them about Native history or the fact that tribes still exist and live all over New Jersey. In order to begin deconstructing these misconceptions, The Native American and Indigenous Studies program prioritizes getting students in direct contact with Indigenous elders and tribes.

The best way for Native history to be taught is “on their land, in their voices,” says Dr. Clatterbuck.

Week one was spent with the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lunaape Tribe in Ringwood. Under the guidance of Ramapough elder Wayne Mann, students learned about Ford Motor Company’s dumping of toxic waste onto the land in the 1960s and 1970s. Having never been given a proper clean up, the land has since been declared a federal superfund site.

The Turtle Clan taught students about their efforts to demand resources and support for a clean up project and students were able to help them create a digital repository documenting Ford’s contamination of Ringwood.

Week two was spent in Bridgeton with the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribe on the Nanticoke tribal lands and camping out at Cohanzick Sanctuary. Students were able to see how the Cohanzick Sanctuary spreads Indigenous wisdom on how people can reconnect with nature.

Member of the Stockbridge Band of Mohegans from Wisconsin, Wanonah Spencer, and Ramapough youth organization, The Tomorrow People, led talking circles and provided guidance on insightful discussions on how to quiet one’s “human.” The Tomorrow People, formed by Wayne Mann, focuses on developing solutions for problems and trauma derived from the contamination of Ringwood.

The tribe emphasized that environmental justice is necessary now more than ever as we face a new peak in the climate crisis. They reminded students that their ancestors handled the planet with great care and if they want to pass along a healthy world to the next generation, land must be restored and taken care of.

As students were shown how to develop their personal relationships with the environment, the tribe encouraged them to do the same with one another, showing how both relationships go hand-in-hand.

For senior Nawal Rai, a Geography, Environmental, and Urban Studies major, camping at Cohanzick Sanctuary was unpredictably illuminating.

“It was honestly very healing for me,” he says. “We went on a walk at midnight through the woods and stargazed…The elders helped us connect with the site and showed us how to open up with one another, and it brought me closer to so many people.”

This level of engagement is exactly how Rai prefers to learn: “We’re not just learning about the history of Indigenous people from an instructor in a classroom. It’s beyond that. Everything we learned came from people who have experienced the violence of our state, and the stories about their own bloodline finally came from them instead of a textbook.”

The third week was spent with Chief Dwaine Perry, Principal Chief of the Ramapough Mountain Indians, Vincent Morgan, Executive Director of Ramapough Mountain Indians, and Owl, attorney for the Ramapough, bringing the students to a historic Ramapough burial ground. What was once a place built to honor their deceased loved ones has since become another dumping ground for the public.

Students learned about the tribe’s preservation efforts whilst working with Ramapough elders and caretakers of the grounds to clean up the property and study county and state maps. They used the information they gathered and GIS mapping to mark graves and outline the borders of the area to more thoroughly document its existence.

Students utilizing GIS mapping

The fourth and final week of the program brought students to work at Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm in Newton. The 14-acre organic farm is run by Turtle Clan Chief Vincent Mann, Michaeline Picaro Mann, and the farm’s manager, Lenny Welch (Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians), as a direct response to the contamination of the Ringwood Community.

The farm uses traditional Indigenous practices while harvesting crops and students were shown these customs while weeding, mulching, harvesting, and learning about Indigenous cultivation and the importance of food sovereignty.

Students washing fresh picked strawberries at Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm.

Beyond providing safe food for tribes that cannot harvest on their own lands, the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm has also been a home for the revitalization of the Munsee language. Students learned about how language can be recovered and also decorated signs to be placed all over the property with crops labeled in Munsee with their English translations.

“I think one of the biggest parts of the unlearning process for me was that there still are communities around working to revitalize their language and culture, and I needed to understand that movement, why it is important to them, and why it is important for the world to preserve language and culture,” Nawal Rai says.

Students painting signage in Munsee

The Field School’s program ended with a heart-warming celebration when the students were invited to participate in the annual Nanticoke Powwow at the Salem County Fairgrounds. Each year, the Nanticoke Powwow hosts two days of cultural celebration filled with traditional music, dance, food, and craftsmanship, and students had the unique opportunity to help those running the festivities.

While the history of New Jersey’s treatment of Indigenous tribes tells a painful story of the intended erasure of Native people, the Field School’s summer program highlights their resilience and survival.

Many of us often succumb to the fallacy that Indigenous tribes live far away, either in distance or in time, but the Native American and Indigenous Studies program dismantles the mentality that refers to Native people in the past tense, and the interpersonal relationships and experiences that students gained during the 2024 summer season is only one way they do it.

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The field school will include a blend of traditional classroom learning, fieldwork, hands-on learning, and working as part of a research team.

Specific activities include:

• working with tribal members to create a digital document archive related to the Ringwood Superfund site located in the Ramapough Turtle Clan homeland
• identifying and recording features of Native cultural heritage which may include a cemetery clean up as well as documentation of the Lenape ceremonial stone landscape
• creating resources to support tribal language learning and revitalization
• working at the tribally operated Munsee Three Sisters farm to support of Ramapough food sovereignty

The field school will meet Tuesday-Friday 4 days/week for 4 weeks 8:30am – 4:30pm. Students are expected to commit to the project full time. We will meet on the MSU campus as well as other locations including the Munsee Three Sisters Farm in Newton, NJ and the Ringwood Public Library. Transportation and meals will be provided when we visit off-campus sites. Students accepted to the field school will receive a stipend to offset personal expenses.

Please complete the following form to apply:

Application deadline: Friday, March 8, 2024, 5:00pm
Questions? Contact the programs directors at nais@montclair.edu

Download the 2024 NAIS Field Summer School Flyer

interviewed , Professor of Religion and co-director of Native American and Indigenous Studies, to delve into the controversy and offer insights into the challenges surrounding understanding and respecting Indigenous practices.

NAIS students and faculty have been working with the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lenape Nation on projects encompassing both environmental justice and language revitalization.

“In order to do the work of decolonizing and promoting well-being of Indigenous people and Indigenous communities in our region, we needed to follow the lead of the work that they have already been doing,” says , associate professor of anthropology and faculty contributor to NAIS.

Montclair scholars began by helping to fight for the proper cleanup of Turtle Clan members’ land, which has been damaged by industrial dumping. They are organizing records of the devastation.

Part of the NAIS program also involves language reclamation work. Students assist with community-based projects led by Nikole Pecore, a Munsee language expert and tribal member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Nation in Wisconsin who has worked on revitalization efforts across the country.

“I think there can be a sort of public misconception, a very deep and troubling misconception, that a) Indigenous people no longer exist among us non-Indigenous folks, and b) … if they do, … their languages and cultures are so small or antiquated that they no longer hold any relevance for our lives today,” Taha says.

The loss of languages is one of the most pressing crises of our time, Taha says.

“As these languages are being threatened so deeply, we’re losing ways of understanding the world, of understanding our connection to the environment, of interacting, [and relating],” Taha says.

Read the full story

Read more about NAIS:
Community-Based Learning Makes an Impact
Students Plant Seeds to Revive a Native American Language

Isabelle Ramos, the Pre-Law program director, hopes that through this program students will see the legal profession as a place that they can belong and picture themselves in. “This program challenges students to think about their values as a professional as well as what client or communities they want to represent as an attorney,” Ramos says.

The program strives to focus on real-world issues. Ramos emphasizes “the importance of including the rights of Native American and Indigenous peoples in our program was foundational to understanding why and how land in the U.S. may be transferred between tribal nations and private individuals.” Additionally, Indigenous people have been disproportionately affected by land contamination issues. “Many of the students told us this was the first time they have learned about land appropriation and about Native American communities in NJ that are surviving and protecting their culture.”

Mark Clatterbuck, associate professor of Religion and co-director of Montclair’s Native American and Indigenous Studies program, notes the valuable opportunity this program provides for students. Although any career path allows students to support Native communities, Clatterbuck specifically highlights that “one of the most urgent needs for Indigenous communities today is legal advocacy on behalf of environmental justice and defense of tribal sovereignty. If even a couple of this year’s students leave the program with a passion for this work, I’d say it was a huge success.”

In addition to classroom work, students made trips to visit Rutgers and Pace University Law Schools to get first-hand experience with what a law class is like and hear from admission officers about how to prepare for the law school admission process. “This allows the participants to connect their experience in the program with what could be their future,” Ramos says. Students also visited the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, District of New Jersey, and met with the pretrial services department, a U.S. Marshal, U.S. attorneys, The Honorable Judge Patty Schwartz and her two law clerks.

Pre-Law Summer Academy students on a visit to Munsee Three Sisters Farm listen to Chief Vincent Mann speak

While visiting the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm in Newton, NJ, students heard from Chief Vincent Mann of the Turtle Clan Ramapough Lenape Nation, about their experiences with environmental racism, specifically the allowance by NJ policymakers at the time to allow  Ford Motor Company to dump toxic industrial waste in nearby Ringwood, making the tribe’s ancestral homeland a deadly — and still active — federal Superfund Site. The results of this contamination include negative health impacts, toxic land and poisoned water. While this is a tragedy, Clatterbuck notes the importance of how students “can take steps to challenge these patterns of exploitation by imagining a different application of the law & daring to radically change these rigged systems to create a more just future for all of us.”

The students did take steps to challenge the patterns, as they collaborated to write a letter to NJ legislators informing them of the environmental contamination and the death toll it has had on the Ramapough Lenape Nation as well as proposing solutions for how NJ can move forward. The letter will be emailed to legislators this week.

Written by Faith Monesteri, Fulcomer Intern

“It’s definitely a great place to start, but hopefully it’s not where we stop,” says Farrah Fornarotto, a junior majoring in Anthropology, with minors in Archaeology and the new Native American and Indigenous Studies. “There’s a lot to tackle.”

The challenges date back decades. Munsee Three Sisters Farm provides traditional food for the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lunaape (Lenape) Nation, a tribe that can no longer safely farm its own land in Upper Ringwood, New Jersey. Environmental and health issues caused by industrial dumping have led to a generational decline in the Turtle Clan members’ ability to practice their culture, including the Munsee language, which is at risk of becoming as dormant as the winter fields.

An intensive, field-based partnership with the Turtle Clan Ramapough includes work at the Munsee Three Sisters Farm, where Montclair students and professors are helping the tribe’s Indigenous food sovereignty and language revitalization efforts.

A key aspect of Montclair’s contributions are organizing the tribe’s records and documents related to the industrial dumping on ancestral land. Students are at work to help gather the scientific evidence documented at the Superfund site, the health impact and oral histories from eyewitnesses, and with University resources, creating a single, digitally accessible repository for future researchers and the tribal members who continue to fight for proper cleanup of the land.

More than 300 pages of newspaper articles detailing the dumping of toxic paint sludge from a Ford Motor Co. factory have been indexed by students. “My students are going through and creating a table of contents identifying the names [of key players], the toxic chemicals listed in reports, physical sites that are listed, agencies that are listed, and creating a searchable tool for that whole collection of news articles,” says Mark Clatterbuck, associate professor of Religion and co-director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program.

Montclair students taking part in the class projects say they share a commitment for helping Indigenous communities. Jala Best, a senior Psychology major, says her drive comes from her experiences as an Afro-Indigenous woman.

“Oftentimes the issues of Native communities are ignored or Native people are spoken about in the past tense, like we are not still living, breathing, surviving and fighting for justice …. You can’t even conceptualize that there are atrocities happening today because you believe that it’s a thing of the past,” Best says.

Mark Clatterbuck, right, oversees the garden signage with students Camille Howard, Julia Rodano and Farrah Fornarotto. “It’s the small things that build up, and eventually over time, the Turtle Clan’s language will be more visible to them and also to the public,” Fornarotto says.

Montclair has initiated a field-based partnership with Turtle Clan Chief Vincent Mann of the Ramapough Lunaape Nation. The University support includes students working directly with the tribe on food sovereignty, the language revitalization effort and ongoing environmental concerns as part of Montclair’s new minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies.

“The issues and the challenges of the Turtle Clan, they’re huge, they’re varied and there’s no shortage of them,” says Clatterbuck.

The program is closely tied to the University’s Land Acknowledgement Statement. Clatterbuck, along with History Professor Elspeth Martini and Anthropology Professor Chris Matthews consulted with New Jersey’s three state-recognized tribal nations – the Ramapough Lenape, Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape and Powhatan Renape – in drafting the statement, and also considered how it could represent a commitment from Montclair to working with and for their communities.

“It’s not just about making some sort of historical reference. It’s really about saying, ‘What is our responsibility to those communities?’” Clatterbuck says.

Mark Clatterbuck, associate professor of Religion and co-director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, constructs signage as part of the field work helping promote the preservation of Native American land and culture.

The program is intentionally community-engaged, hands-on and focused on problem-solving, including finding creative ways to support community-driven language revitalization and environmental recovery. “The Ramapough understand that part of their healing and survival is really dependent on recovering key aspects of their cultural ways,” Clatterbuck says. “Language is on par with restoring foodways and their access to clean water, land and air.”

Munsee language expert, Nikole Pecore, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Nation in Wisconsin, has guided Montclair students studying Linguistic Anthropology in building a digital repository of instructional materials that will be used to train new Munsee teachers and support community learners.

“We’re looking at language as a key to culture, to bringing back Munsee speaking cultures, as well as other Lenape languages belonging to original peoples in the state of New Jersey,” says Associate Anthropology Professor Maisa Taha.

Work on the farm also includes students preparing the fields and helping deliver the organic, healthy, medicinal healing crops to the community. “It’s doing the nitty-gritty work with local communities and following their lead,” Clatterbuck says.

Meryem Teke, a senior Religion major, paints a garden sign at the Munsee Three Sisters Farm. The work is among the creative ways Montclair is supporting the Turtle Clan’s language revitalization and environmental recovery.

“It might be challenging to figure out how all of these different pieces fit together. But the fact of the matter is they are all intimately connected,” Taha says. “You can’t have language without culture. You can’t have culture without tribal sovereignty. You can’t have tribal sovereignty without environmental justice. What we’re bringing to our students and frankly, to ourselves as well, is this huge opportunity to work with our tribal partners in trying to understand those connections and come up with reasonable, impactful solutions that will serve them for years to come.”

Clatterbuck adds, “We’re all passionate about this on a personal level, and we see this as a matter of justice and addressing – you hear the buzzword ‘decolonization’ thrown around a lot – but as far as I’m concerned, this is what that work looks like. It’s messy, and it’s trial and error, and we’re figuring all this out as we go. But that is the work.”

Photo Gallery

Montclair’s new minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies is focusing on issues of indigenous sovereignty, cultural revitalization, environmental justice and language reclamation. Some of the field work is happening at the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm in Newtown, New Jersey.

Montclair students have created signage for the Three Sisters Farm in the Munsee language. The illustrations will help tribal members as well as visitors to the farm visually connect the pictures and actual plants with the Munsee word. Efforts are also underway to create audio files so that learners can hear those words when accessed by QR codes added to the signs.

A rooster at Munsee Three Sisters Farm.

Story by Staff Writer Marilyn Joyce Lehren. Photos by John J. LaRosa.

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