Welcome to Widoktadwen.
Nishnabe legend tells of seven prophets who visited the Nishnabek, each bringing word of a new fire, or prophecy. The first six fires foretold of great migrations and the eventual devastation wrought by colonization. Despite the bleak outlook for the Nishnabek, the seventh and final prophet left them with hope for the future. In the time of the seventh fire, a new generation of Nishnabek would rise up and reclaim the old ways, retracing the steps of their ancestors and picking up the pieces of what they left behind. This is the seventh fire.
Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge is headquartered on the traditional homelands of the Lenape.
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Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge presents our first annual Good Medicine Indigenous Wellness Celebration on Saturday, June 3rd at Riverfront Park in Reading, PA. Learn about Native American approaches to health and wellness and connect with local resources.
Event is FREE and open to ALL! Find more details here.
Education
Widoktadwen partners with local schools, universities, public libraries, and other organizations to provide guidance in teaching about Native peoples, acknowledging both their histories and contemporary lives.
Leadership
We endeavor to demonstrate Indigenous leadership through community service related to social justice initiatives and environmental advocacy in our local community. We want to set an example of how to steward the land we occupy.
Activism
Our Center promotes indigenous values through drawing attention to the unique challenges facing Native peoples and cultures and working to decolonize the spaces we occupy.
Invisibility in Pennsylvania
American Indians on the East Coast have seemingly disappeared into history, erased from memory for various reasons. In Berks County, those Lenape that avoided removal west assimilated.
Learn more about the history of the Lenape in Pennsylvania and the establishment of the Museum of Indian Culture in Allentown in this article from Taylor & Francis Online.
Excerpt
For decades, people with native background took pains to conceal their identities. As one woman of Lenape descent told us, ‘To be truthful, you only know what you hear from your parents or your relatives or the other people about your family. In those days, it was not cool to be Indian. Matter of fact, it was dangerous to be Indian. You lost your job if you were Indian. You couldn’t go to school, many times, if you were Indian. You certainly couldn’t practice your religion because it was disallowed. So the only way you got a feeling of who you were was by listening to the old ones talk, your family talk’. People told us about grandparents or great grandparents being taken away from their families to the Carlisle Indian School when they were identified as Indians. Twentieth century entertainments stereotyped Indians as blood-thirsty savages. A woman in her 60s told us, ‘I didn’t tell nobody I was an Indian even when I was that young. I never went out and said “Yeah, I’m an Indian” at school’. I never said that. I knew who I was and I left it at that. And when I would see these things on TV, I’d say, ‘Oh my God, I’m glad I didn’t say that because they’re really mean people, these Indians. Nasty and hurtful’. Read more.
A story matrix connects all of us.
Joy harjo
There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part.
Joy Harjo is the current poet laureate of the United States. This quote is from her memoir, Crazy Brave.
Check out the Native Education for All initiative by IllumiNative in partnership with Amplifier to learn more about Joy Harjo and other notable contemporary Native leaders!
Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge 