Lenapehoking ~ Watershed - Alliance for Watershed Education of the Delaware River

Lenapehoking ~ Watershed

a place for water, art and culture.

The Alliance for Watershed Education is proud to present Lenapehoking ~ Watershed, a wide-ranging, multifaceted art project that wants to introduce you to your watershed!

Al Mudhif at SCEE, photo by Rob Zverina

A program of the Alliance for Watershed Education of the Delaware River (AWE), the initiative winds its way through the landscapes and waterways of the Delaware River Watershed in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

Taking place from spring of 2021 to late fall of 2021, Lenapehoking~Watershed offers multiple opportunities for inspiration, refreshment, and learning. You’re invited to discover new things, meet new people at outdoor cultural gatherings, and enjoy solitary meditations on art and nature through the site-responsive, temporary sculpture installations of Water Spirit and the small-group, interactive card game, Aqua Marooned!

Aqua Marooned! card
Card from Aqua Marooned!

The Delaware River watershed is a huge area, channeling rainfall and snowmelt from the Catskill Mountains along creeks, streams, and rivers, eventually joining the Delaware Bay and Atlantic Ocean, that exists within Lenapehoking, a place-name that existed before the watershed and the river were named “Delaware” by British colonizers who imposed their ownership of the lands over the rightful stewardship of the Indigenous Lenape people.

Much of this land is now heavily urbanized and suburbanized–but not all of it! L~W is designed to help all of us living in this region enjoy the wellbeing benefits of time in green and watery spaces. Part of the mission of this project is to activate the watershed in the public’s imagination and bring depth to the conversation about what it means to be part of a watershed.

The name ‘Lenapehoking ~ Watershed, a place for water, art and culture’ was chosen after consulting with citizens of the local Lenni-Lenape Nations. ‘Lenapehoking’ is a place name that means ‘the land of the Lenape people.’

Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that the lands on which the AWE centers are located are the ancestral lands of the Lenni-Lenape people, whose presence and resilience continues to this day in the tri-state area of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania as well as in forced diaspora throughout Turtle Island. We take this opportunity to honor the original caretakers of this land and recognize the histories of land theft, violence, erasure, and oppression that has brought our institution and ourselves here. The L~W art project team and the AWE network of environmental education centers acknowledge the Lenni-Lenape people’s environmental stewardship, since time immemorial, as critical.