Three events at Nurture Nature Center, Easton, will focus on Native American connections to land and water resources in the Delaware and Lehigh River watersheds.

A public screening of the award-winning film, The Water Gap: Return to the Homeland, will take place on Sunday, March 12 at 1 pm. The film documents the real-life experiences of 14 youth from three Lenape nations who spent time immersed in their ancestral homeland in the Delaware River watershed in 2016. Choctaw filmmaker Kyle Kauwika Harris and several young Delaware adults from Anadarko, Oklahoma, who appear in the film as teens, will join us to share what it was like as kids from the American Midwest to spend time in their homeland in the Eastern Woodlands, and how that experience has affected them to this day.

March 12, 3 – 4 pm, also features the closing reception of Landmarks and Waterways, an exhibit of eleven large-scale maps of the Lehigh and Delaware watershed that highlight the history, geology and ecology of the Lehigh Valley region. These colorful maps were created to bring each watershed to life for residents and visitors alike. Every map includes Native American references and geographical place names for rivers, lakes, mountains, streams and towns.  This exhibit may be viewed on Wednesdays and Saturdays, noon – 4 pm, from now through March 12.

Lastly, Nurture Nature Center will host an illustrated presentation on Indigenous constructed ceremonial landscapes in the mid-Atlantis and Northeast, the challenges of identifying and protecting these cultural landscapes, and emerging technologies and partnerships to that end. Dr. Julia King from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and representatives from the New England Antiquities Research Association will address frequently dismissed and long misunderstood ambiguous stone and gravel constructions found throughout eastern United States. The presentation will take place Monday, March 13 at 7 pm.

Each of these events is being held in conjunction with the Lehigh Valley Watershed Conference being held at Lehigh University on March 14.  One of the four tracks for the conference is titled “Indigenous Perspectives” and will include sessions on a variety of issues, projects, and programs indigenous people and their communities are involved with today in the Delaware River basin.

Nurture Nature Center is located at 518 Northampton St., Easton. The staff parking lot in back on Pine St is available for visitors’ use. However, guests must walk around the block to enter by the front door.  For more information: www.nurturenaturecenter.org

 

Information provided to TVL by:
Liesel Dreisbach
Program Coordinator
Nurture Nature Center
518 Northampton St.
Easton, PA 18042
www.nurturenaturecenter.org

 

 

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